Lost and Found
by Rose7
Summary: SWKotORfic: The Unknown Regions beckon as an Exile tries to write herself a future and a former Sith Lord nears a final confrontation with her past. Sequel to "Slow Dissolve" and "Future's End".
1. Prologue

Back in the saddle again…Enjoy!

* * *

Coruscant

_"You cheating son of a schutta…" the Duros trailed off in his own language, angrily throwing his side deck against the wall of the cantina and storming off._

_Atton Rand slid the credits off the side of the table and shuffled them neatly between his rough leather gloves, smirking._

_It had been satisfying. Far too easy, but nonetheless satisfying to make a big win at a Coruscanti Pazaak table. He leaned back in his chair, surveying the rest of the room and wishing more of them had been around to see his win._

_Wishing _she _had been around to see his win. Atton frowned._

Wouldn't have mattered anyways. She doesn't like Pazaak. And she doesn't like you. She likes him…well, no, she doesn't like him either. That's some consolation, at least-

_He sighed. Needless to say, he had been playing a _lot _of Pazaak in his head the past few years._

_It kept him from thinking too far beyond punching in hyperspace coordinates or taking out a hissing shyrack with his blaster. It made him remember his place; a decent pilot with no other prospects beyond flying a half-demolished ship._

_And to hell with whatever reasons he might have for staying with it year after year. They could stay buried, along with the rest of everything else that had been unearthed before Malachor._

_He tossed two or three credits in his hand, getting ready to return to the ship._

_The credit didn't come back down from where he had tossed it._

_"That's an easy way to lose money. You're lucky I'm not a pickpocket."_

_Atton glanced up at the figure standing over him, with one hand on her hip and the other holding his credit in the palm of her hand._

_"If so, I'm lucky to be getting robbed, aren't I?"_

_The Twi'lek smiled, a strange kind of innocence to it that made him slightly uneasy. 'Innocent' was definitely not a word used to describe a Twi'lek female. "I saw how you cleaned out that Duros. Nice job." _

_Atton shrugged, leaning one arm over the back of his seat and smirking up at the Twi'lek._

_"It was nothing. There are a lot more exciting things I can do. I'm multi-talented like that."_

_He watched the Twi'lek blush, a slight twinge of purple coming into her cheeks._

_"Want to play a hand?" she asked.  
_

_Atton hesitated._

_They needed the credits for continual repairs to the _Ebon Hawk_. If he lost them, he was reasonably certain that there was no one else in the Pazaak den with the credits and the lack of talent to replace them._

_But the Twi'lek in front of him was the brightest, most vibrant shade of blue he'd ever seen. That and her ready smile were enough to convince him that he could stay for one more game. Atton gestured to the seat across from him._

_"You got a name, little girl?" he murmured as the Twi'lek seated herself._

_"Little girl?" the Twi'lek replied, frowning._

Uh oh, _Atton thought, quickly trying to backtrack._

_"Hey, it wasn't an insult or anything-"_

_"Just seems a little inappropriate with the way you're staring at my headtails," the Twi'lek added, running her hand slowly over the end of one._

_He watched the seductive action, smirking._

_"Hey, no problem. Keep doing that and I'll be glad to call you whatever you like."_

_He watched the Twi'lek pull out her side deck, expertly shuffling it and laying the cards out on the table._

She's not half bad, _Atton mused as they played. Her moves were unpredictable and she had a horrible Pazaak face, but in a few more years she could probably make a decent amount of credits._

_He wondered idly where she'd learned to play so well at all. She looked at least ten years younger than Atton himself. He could make out the faint cyan lines of vibroblade scars running over her forearms._

Probably clawed her way out of slavery to some Hutt, or a bounty hunter just starting out, _he concluded._

_"Hey, you're the pilot for that smuggling ship that was all over the HoloNet a couple years ago, aren't you? The…_Hawk _something, right?"_

_"Guilty as charged," Atton murmured. "Though I can't say I'm proud my claim to fame is flying that collection of scrap metal."_

_"I heard she was a fast ship," the Twi'lek added. _

_"Yeah, maybe back in the wars against Exar Kun," Atton replied, smirking. "Why so interested? Looking to take the floating death-trap off my hands?"_

_The Twi'lek looked tempted for a moment._

_"Nah," she finally replied, turning a card over and smiling at him. "Just happened to notice you and your crew walking around. You guys are kind of conspicuous, with an assault droid and all."_

_Atton rolled his eyes, looking around nervously even though the HK droid was back on the ship and nowhere near him._

_"What's the matter?" the Twi'lek said, leaning forward and grinning. "You afraid of it or something?"_

_"Let's just say I'm not too fond of droids altogether."_

Statement: And that particular hunter-killer model makes me really fracking uncomfortable.

_"You could always sell it."_

_Atton drew a card, snorting._

_"If it were up to me, I'd put that thing and his trash compactor buddy out on some street corner and leave 'em both for salvagers to take, but they aren't my droids to sell."_

_He lay down his card with a triumphant smirk. "Twenty. Hope you've got some credits, little girl." _

_The Twi'lek twisted her mouth up wryly, tossing a couple his way._

_"The name's Mission."_

* * *

"_Go ahead T3. We haven't got much else on this ship to lose anyways."_

_The droid beeped in response, and the engines on either side of her groaned and shuddered violently for a minute or two._

_Then a pipe above her head burst open, raining black soot over the exposed hyperdrive and filling the room with a thin gray film._

_Mira choked and hacked her way through the cloud, waving her hands and cursing loudly._

Maybe this piece of hovering trash doesn't have much else to lose, but my lungs and sanity definitely do_, the bounty hunter thought moodily, sitting up and struggling to wipe the dirt and grime off of her face and arms._

_Since clawing its way off Malachor Five, floating adrift for a few parsecs before being hauled in by a passing Republic freighter, the _Ebon Hawk_ had been plagued with a steadily increasing list of mechanical problems._

_Mira ran a hand through her red hair, greasy and unkempt from a day of repairs, and wondered again why the hell she was still on this ship._

Or at least why I seem to be the only one doing any manual labor, _she thought, frowning. Atton had left the ship early, claiming that he was going to look for some cheap parts for the malfunctioning gangplank, but she knew the only parts the pilot had found were parts of a word: "can" and "tina"._

_And the Jedi…well, they were off doing Jedi things. Masters and Padawans and bureaucracy that Mira was glad she didn't have to deal with. So that left her alone on the _Ebon Hawk, _with only that creepy assault droid and T3, who rolled around the ship somewhat listlessly._

Where's that Zabrak when you need him, _Mira thought, a sad smile on her face as she got ready to take another stab at the hyperdrive._

_She heard the muffled beeping of the utility droid echo down the hall, too muffled to make out._

_"You say something, T3?" Mira called. There was no answer._

_Sighing exasperatedly, the bounty hunter pushed herself up from the ground, wiping her hands on her pant leg and peering down the hallway outside of the engine room._

_There was no sign of either droid. The ship was eerily silent, except for the soft creak of the gangplank._

_She didn't have the Force, but Mira had been in enough cesspools to know when something didn't smell right. She pulled out her blaster, tiptoeing around the corner and keeping close to the wall as she moved towards the ship's exit._

_She was so focused on the careful steps she was taking, on holding her breath and trying to spot any slight difference in the ship's numerous bulkheads and panels that she completely missed the towering figure blocking her path._

_Mira bumped into it, stumbling a few steps back and immediately raising her wrist, tensed to fire a dart at whatever it was. The figure sniffed, growling softly._

_She looked up at the Wookiee, almost too tall to fit in the ship and certainly too tall for the doorway._

_"Oh great. Is Hanharr getting more of you fur-balls to do his dirty work for him?" Mira snapped nervously. _

_The Wookiee was definitely not the bounty hunter who had been on her trail the past few years. This one was of a darker, slightly reddish hue, and he regarded her curiously, like she was a child he didn't quite know what to do with._

_He growled again. She was no expert in the Wookiee language- she had just been threatened by Hanharr enough that she had come to recognize what certain phrases sounded like. This one was definitely speaking a more provincial kind of dialect._

_Mira pointed her blaster towards the Wookiee, slowly stepping backwards as he moved towards her._

Where the hell are those droids? _The HK model usually jumped at the chance for a violent situation. And T3 was always ready with an ion charge for whatever happened to be threatening them._

_"I don't know what you want, but you've got to the count of one to get your hairy carcass off this ship."_

_The Wookiee roared sharply, reaching towards her._

_Mira immediately reacted, firing once from her blaster, which deflected off the ceiling of the _Ebon Hawk, _leaving a scorch mark. _

_The Wookiee didn't slow at all. He lunged at her._

_Uncharacteristically (though understandable considering her past with Wookiees) Mira let out a short yelp as the Wookiee's huge fist slammed down on her head and everything went dark._

Dxun

_At first, he reacted as a proper Mandalore should._

_Thinking only of which warriors would be chastised for their error in judgment, for their weaknesses, for their failure in allowing someone to infiltrate the camp and to get as far as a duel against Mandalore himself._

_He had not even turned around at first, only finishing his work at the computer console and listening carefully to try and discern which weapon would be needed- his assault rifle or his vibroblade._

_The steady hum gave it away instantly, low and even. A lightsaber. He would have to use the vibroblade._

_Mandalore slowly gripped the hilt, thankful that he had recently upgraded the vibration cell and sharpened the edge._

_"Impressive of you to get this far," he murmured lazily, unsheathing his weapon and holding it at his side, still with his back to the Force-using intruder._

_"I see you've allowed your warriors to become quite the docile little weaklings. I wonder if they follow their leader in that respect."_

_For a moment, Canderous was caught off guard. _

_The moment passed, and he smirked against his helmet, turning to face the Jedi who stood behind him with a yellow double blade extended in front of her._

_"I've killed grown men for lesser words."_

_She was smug. A small smile twitched at the edges of her lips._

_"Such as those that are now lying unconscious along the path to this complex?"_

_He chuckled._

_"You've grown some spine. Is there enough in that scrawny little body of yours to do what you've come here to do?"_

_Bastila glared at him, and he liked her best like that- when her eyebrows were narrowed over her indignant blue eyes, and she looked angry and wild enough to tear the entire enclave apart._

_"Just what do you suppose I've come here to do, _Mandalore_?" the Jedi spat towards him. She twirled her blade between her hands, stepping towards him. "Kill you? I am a Jedi. We don't follow your Mandalorian rituals of death and destruction."_

_He shrugged, smirking again to himself and watching the way her Jedi robes followed her as she moved._

_"Perhaps you're here to avail yourself of _other_ Mandalorian rituals, although I had thought those were against your vaunted Jedi ideals too."_

_Bastila lunged towards him and he slammed his vibroblade up against her glowing yellow blade, laughing._

_"Touched a nerve, have I? Forgotten your sacred principles already?"_

_"I was under the impression that Mandalorians did their own hunting, not hire incompetent bounty hunters. Were you able to spare the credits?"_

_He frowned, parrying another of her blows._

_"I recently met another Jedi like you. She also wielded a double blade and never knew when to shut up."_

_Bastila whirled around to sideswipe him with her lightsaber, her dark brown hair flopping about with the motion of her body and threatening to come loose from where it was tied back._

_"Touched a nerve, have I?" she mocked._

_"You claim to be above the recklessness and quick judgment of the Republic and Jedi like Malak and Revan, but you're just as quick to condemn. Look around you, Bastila. Your Order has barely survived. Your blessed Republic is hanging on by its fingernails. I expected better from you."_

_"I also expected better, Canderous," she said softly. "From a man who claimed he had been altered by his life since the wars, who watched a comrade blast himself in the skull over a matter of honor."_

_For a moment he remembered the sands of Tatooine; not light tan and blistering and going on forever, but dark and sticky, spotted with Jagi's blood and pieces of his brain._

_He pushed against her lightsaber with his weapon, grasping her hand where it was wrapped around the lower part of the hilt._

_With a quick twist of his wrist, he had turned her around, her back up against him and her own lightsaber at her throat._

_If the Jedi was alarmed, she didn't show it. Her body was in no way stiff or uncomfortable, even with his hand tight around her gripped weapon and his mouth near her ear._

_"I'm pleased you had the sense to return, if your reasons a bit misguided," he added._

_The doors to the complex opened, half a dozen of his warriors charging in. One knelt in front of him, a recently promoted sentry by the name of Lador._

_"We have failed you in allowing the Jedi to infiltrate the camps, Mandalore."_

_"Your failure will be dealt with in time, Lador," Mandalore replied icily._

_He yanked the lightsaber out of Bastila's hands, shoving her towards the waiting guard._

_"Put the Jedi in the holding cells. I want twenty-four hour surveillance and at least four men at all times."_

_The Jedi stared him down, and he returned her gaze, sheathing his vibroblade back at his side._

_He wasn't surprised the next morning when the lightsaber he had taken and kept next to him as he slept had disappeared, nor was he surprised when all four of his men were found unconscious; three on the ground outside the Force cell and one inside. He also wasn't surprised when he found that his secure files had been accessed, all the information he had collected on the Republic during his time with the Exile copied and tampered with._

_Mandalore was only heard to remark somewhat amusedly under his breath:_

_"Stubborn Jedi Princess."_

Jedi Temple, Coruscant

_"Can I give you a hand?"_

_Mical glanced up from the three piles of datapads and holocrons surrounding him, forming a sort of wall. He could only see the upper half of his inquirer's face- a raised eyebrow and dark brown hair._

_He stood, shaking his head and trying to get rid of the crossed eyes that came from spending the entirety of the day bent over damaged archives._

_"You look a little overwhelmed," the Jedi before him added, gesturing towards the piles._

_Mical smiled._

_"No more than the Order is with the monumental task before us."_

_The Temple had been ransacked during the past few years; graffiti lined its once pristine halls, vandals had broken windows and doors and rewired computer systems. The Jedi libraries and archives themselves were currently in the process of being reclassified, organized, and shelved- as well as taking inventory of what might have been stolen or destroyed._

_Mical had jumped at the task, and his master had been quick to encourage him to help._

Perhaps a little too encouraging, _he thought, his smile falling a bit. She was quick to encourage him at any task that left him by himself and her to go…well, wherever it was she went._

The pilot may know something of it, _he thought, trying to keep his face impassive. There was no reason to suspect her of that. She showed Atton no more attention than she did the rest of their crew._

_Mical suddenly realized the Jedi was still standing in front of him._

_"I apologize. I don't believe we've met. Padawan Mical." _

_The Jedi nodded, extending his hand._

_"Good to meet you, Mical. Name's Dustil." The name sounded vaguely familiar, and he felt very strongly as though he should recognize it._

_Dustil moved past him, inspecting Mical's carefully categorized piles, picking up one datapad after another and replacing a few in the wrong pile._

_Mical followed him, putting each back in its proper place._

_"The Sith really did a number on this place," the Jedi murmured, glancing around the tattered remains of the library._

_"Indeed. I sometimes wonder if the Order will ever recover from the blow." _

_Dustil smiled patronizingly. "The Order's been through this before. They'll bounce back eventually." He rubbed his hands together. "How can I help?"_

_Mical gestured to a nearby pile of unsorted archives. The Jedi seated himself next to Mical at the table._

_He watched as Dustil glanced at one or two, not even reading them all the way through and just tossing them in front of him one after the other._

He must be a newly chosen Padawan or apprentice, _Mical thought. Only the brand new ones exhibited that level of…'confidence'._

_"I've heard stories about you, Padawan," the Jedi murmured conversationally. "About you and your master, how you defeated a whole slew of rising Sith Lords…Nihilus, Sion, Traya-"_

_"By no means single-handedly," Mical replied. "It was a long and difficult mission."_

_"Is it true what people are saying?" Dustil added._

_"Is what true?"_

_"Is it true that you discovered evidence of a larger threat somewhere in the Unknown Regions? That the Sith Lords you battled were influenced by teachings from ancient Sith?"_

_"I'm sorry; I'm afraid I'm not able to discuss it."_

_The Council had decreed that his research and their findings were to stay private knowledge for the time being; that it was unwise to panic a rebuilding Order with notions of another impending attack. Mical whole-heartedly agreed._

_And besides, his master had also requested that he refrain from mentioning the gist of what had happened during their mission to anyone else. He gladly complied with her request._

_Dustil nodded, ignoring his own pile of datapads and reaching for one that had fallen on the floor._

_"This doesn't look like anything out of the Temple's archives."_

_Mical glanced down. It was one of his own datapads; containing all his findings from their mission. He had brought them with him in hopes of finding more clues amid the archives, which Padawans were usually not permitted to browse._

_He felt guilty for technically going against the tenets of the Order, but he had been given permission to handle the archives. Surely it wouldn't be completely wrong to try and shed some light on several things that remained unresolved from their battles against the Sith Lords._

It would give her some peace of mind at least, _he thought, sighing._

_"Oh, forgive me. Those are a few of my own. They must have gotten mixed up within the other materials."_

_Dustil nodded, putting it back on the floor and turning back to his own pile._

_"Mical! Padawan!" _

_Mical glanced up. The voice seemed to be coming from deeper in the library. It sounded female._

_He hurriedly pushed his chair back._

_"Please excuse me," he murmured to Dustil, who barely looked up from the table._

_Mical continued in the direction of the voice, past a few empty or broken shelves._

_"Padawan!" the voice called again. It didn't sound quite like his master. Something was slightly off with it, but it had called his name nonetheless. Mical turned down the next aisle, sure that he had heard the voice clearly from there._

_The aisle dead-ended into a large pillar. There was no one there._

Funny. I was so sure I heard my name, _Mical thought, frowning and heading back towards his table of archives._

_The Jedi called Dustil had disappeared. Mical wasn't surprised. The majority of new Padawan or apprentices were unready for their promotions; cocky and arrogant._

He probably considered himself above organizing the Jedi archives, _Mical thought, rolling his eyes._

_He sat back down at the table, reaching for one of his datapads._

_His hand brushed the cold marble floor of the Jedi Temple. He dug through the pile, finding one or two of his datapads, but no more. _

_Mical furrowed his brow. He had had at least six. He glanced off in the direction of the exit._

No. How could you think that of a fellow Jedi? _Mical scolded himself. Dustil had shown no particular interest in his records or his mission beyond one or two questions, which he hadn't pressed after Mical's refusal to answer._

I must have just misplaced them…_He thought, shaking his head and returning to the archives._

Citadel Station, Telos

_"I know you."_

_She was startled out of her half-nap; the rhythmic motion of the Citadel shuttle and the warmth of her robe around her enough to lull her head into drooping, her back to settle into the worn seat behind her._

_They hadn't reached their destination yet; Education Unit 316 was a ways off from Residential Unit 029, at least a twenty minute ride._

_Katrina blinked, glancing up at the figure standing over her. A young boy, maybe eight or nine._

_She wondered for a moment why he looked so smug._

_"Excuse me?"_

_"You're that lady everyone talks about," the boy said triumphantly._

Don't look around, _she reminded herself. _Don't act like there's a reason for people to talk about you.

_All the same, she couldn't help turning her head slightly to the left, wondering if there was anyone else on the relatively crowded shuttle watching her._

_"Am I?" she replied, trying to give the boy a patronizing smile._

_No one else seemed to notice, though it didn't help to alleviate the involuntary urge she had to fidget or run her fingers comfortingly over the lines of her lightsaber._

_"I've heard stories about you," the boy continued loudly. "People say you're a Jedi."_

Where the hell is your mother, s_he thought, frowning. _

_"You've got quite an imagination, don't you? I'm just on my way to pick up my daughter from school. Where are you going?" she murmured, trying to distract him._

_The boy looked her over, tilting his head from side to side._

_"I heard you're that evil Sith we learned about in school. That you're Revan."_

_For a moment all she could think of was how if she was this kid's mother, she would give him a good smack across the face. _I'm never going to let Celyn be this rude.

_She was suddenly aware of how a few of the passengers in the immediate vicinity of where she sat before the boy had turned to look at the mention of her name._

_"Are you?" the boy demanded._

_Katrina sighed._

_"Yes."_

_She waited patiently for the uproar from the shuttle's passengers, for them to surround her, shouting and spitting._

_But none came. Only the boy's mother, charging over and putting her hands protectively on the boy's shoulders._

_"You shouldn't run off like that," she scolded. "Scared me half to death." Her glare went from the top of her son's head to Katrina._

_"And you…filling his head with ridiculous stories like that. Revan's dead. Don't tease my son." She ushered the boy back to the other corner of the shuttle._

_Katrina settled back and wrapped her robes around her, pulling one leg up onto the seat next to her and glancing out the windows at the rush of modules and passing shuttles._

I hate Telos.

_Well, maybe not hate. There were worse places in the galaxy to live, certainly places where rumors about her would fly much easier and nastier than they did on the Citadel._

_She definitely didn't like Citadel Station. It was confusing and alien, with its innumerable modules and mechanical surroundings, despite the Ithorians' efforts to beautify the station with examples of the plant life they were reintroducing to Telos's ecosystem._

_None of it had really mattered until now- before Celyn was born she hadn't ventured anywhere on the station besides their quarters and the docks._

_But now that she was back in the public eye, making routine journeys to take Celyn to and from school, the rumors that had plagued her since her very first landing on this planet had returned._

_At first, they were nothing but "Dark Lord" this and "Revan" that and "danger to society" thrown in for good measure. _

_She wondered briefly what kinds of questions Carth had had to face when he had finally woken up from his injuries years ago on the surface of the dying Telos, surrounded by his panicked countrymen. She thought of asking him when she got back-_

_No. Better to leave answers like that buried. Back then he had probably just vehemently denied that she was anything other than Katrina, a Jedi with a green lightsaber._

_Katrina smirked. The lie hadn't changed much. Now he just vehemently denied that she was anything other than Katrina Onasi, a Jedi with a green lightsaber._

_Once she and Dustil had returned from Anelli, the rumors had changed to more unsavory ones. The minute one enterprising newsvid had happened to catch a holo of her exiting Admiral Carth Onasi's quarters, every headline had some variant of "War Hero's Jedi Lover!" for a few weeks._

_Luckily for both her and her Padawan (as well as Carth's reputation), they were Jedi in high demand as far as top priority Jedi Council missions went. She took every opportunity to leave the Citadel, to get away from a rebuilding society that was still hostile towards Force-users._

_Then came the purges, the assassins, Chael, and the secret Malak helped her to unearth. Rumors hadn't seemed very important then. __When she and Dustil had returned again and she had had Celyn, they had dropped considerably in number anyways._

_Jedi or not, a woman with a daughter who was respectably married to a decorated Admiral and cultural hero didn't conjure half as many rumors as a single woman who came and went from the Admiral's quarters as she pleased. __Now if there were rumors they rose up in sporadic amounts, usually whenever something happened to go wrong with a restoration zone or some kind of trouble arose on the station. They confined themselves to the whispers of women and the suspicious stares from men, and occasionally found their voices in the inquiries of HoloNet reporters and the gossip of children; like the boy who had just talked to her._

_She wondered for a moment if Celyn had again forgotten the rule about Mommy's name- that even though Father and Dustil called her 'Revan', Celyn was never to tell anyone that was Mommy's name._

I'm complicating her life, _Katrina thought with a sigh. _And she's only four.

_The shuttle finally reached its destination, slowing to a halt with an abrupt shudder. Katrina rose from her seat, following the herd of people towards the exit, beginning the familiar path to Celyn's school._

_A nearby information terminal shouted out the hourly newsfeed:_

_"Ithorian officials announced today new predictions concerning the percentage of Telos's surface that is considered salvageable. Preliminary numbers show an increase from thirty-five percent to thirty-nine-point-seven, bolstering the Telosian Council's hopes that percentages will soon climb to fifty…"_

_Telos itself wasn't too bad._

Not nearly as bad at it was eight years ago, anyways, _she thought. _

_The ruins still in the habitable regions had been razed and replaced with flora and fauna from different planets- some it previously native to Telos and others exotic variations designed to improve the planet. The energy shields had been completely redesigned and strengthened, blocking off the black skies and crumbling earth of the unsalvageable parts of the planet._

_She and Dustil had been down there many times, trying to protect restoration crews when the assassinations had begun. __Just recently, the Telosian Council had announced that one or two restoration zones had been deemed habitable and safe for residential use- at an incredibly hefty price, of course. The general populace of Citadel Station, while being unable to afford it, was elated. _

_Carth and Dustil had been no exception. Hell, they were already devising plans to use Carth's status to get a claim on one of the units being constructed._

_And it didn't matter if she was on the Citadel or within a nest of rotten, exploding kinrath eggs. Anywhere that Carth was felt like home._

_Living on the planet itself might be better than the Citadel, at least. There the air wouldn't be synthesized, and she wouldn't feel like she was stuck in a tin can-_

You're not going to be here to move in, _she thought absently. _

_By the time the units were finished being constructed, she would be gone._

_She spotted Celyn's teacher- a woman somewhere around her age by the name of Dima, with a face that looked like it was being held back by taut wires._

_That tightness only extended itself when the woman noticed Katrina and half-heartedly waved._

_"Mrs. Onasi," she said, curt and sharp as though she were saluting the Admiral rather than the missus._

_For some reason, she hated the title. When Carth said 'my wife', it still meant Morgana Onasi. __When Katrina heard it as a reference to herself, it only reminded her that she had unwittingly killed the real Mrs. Onasi and took her place._

_"You don't sound very happy to see me." _

_Dima smiled apologetically, but even her smile looked pained._

_"I'm afraid there was an accident-"_

_"An accident?" Katrina repeated, staring the woman down._

_Dima lifted her arm, beckoning behind the wall that separated the entrance from the rest of the school._

_Katrina burst out laughing, unable to control it despite the disapproving gaze of the teacher and her aide, who emerged from behind the wall with her daughter._

_Celyn Onasi was smeared with dark oil stains over her cheeks and clothing. Her arms were folded in front of her, her head burrowed into her neck._

_"What happened?" _

_Dima seemed to be fighting a smirk too despite her reaction to Katrina's laughter. "One of the teaching droids suffered a burned out vocabulator. Rather than alerting one of the staff, your daughter took it upon herself to try and 'repair' E2." _

_The little girl scowled at the floor, kicking at some imaginary offender._

_"My daughter? All I see here is a scrubby little Jawa."_

_A giggle escaped from her daughter's lips at the nickname, and Celyn threw her arms around Katrina. She returned the hug, lifting her arm and noticing that she too was now smeared with oil._

_"Sorry…I'll talk to her. I'll pay for the droid too, if you want." _

_Dima shook her head, gesturing vaguely towards the shuttle bay elevators. "As long as there are no more…accidents, Celyn is welcome to return."_

_Katrina nodded, grasping Celyn's hand and turning to walk back towards the elevators._

_"I guess fixing him didn't go so well, huh?" she teased, glancing down at her daughter._

_"I could have," Celyn insisted. "But he blew up."_

_She sat down on a nearby bench to wait for the next shuttle and tried to wipe the oil from Celyn's clothing, only succeeding in smearing it more._

_"You can't keep taking things apart, Celyn," Katrina murmured. "You're going to get hurt or damage something important."_

_"But he was _broken,_" Celyn said pointedly, as though that should have been justification enough._

_She ran her fingers through her daughter's slightly curly brown hair, working through the tangles the grease and oil had made._

The Admiral really knows how to pick nicknames, _she thought, shaking her head._

'_Jawa' had been coined only a few months ago, when Celyn had accidentally broken one of her toys apart and hoarded the parts instead of throwing them away. When the toy had resurfaced a few months later, crudely reassembled, Carth had been quick to classify what their daughter reminded him of._

_"I don't like it when things are broken," her daughter added, standing patiently in front of her while Katrina inspected the state of her clothing._

You also don't like it when you don't know things, or when you don't understand something.

_Celyn nodded._

_And of course she had the Force- how could she not? _

_So far it hadn't manifested itself beyond passing messages between her and Celyn. Katrina suspected she could do it with Dustil too, but she had no proof beyond the way he only had to wink at the little girl and she would burst out in giggles. It probably also played a hand in helping a four-year-old know how to take somewhat complex things apart and put them back together again._

_The shuttle arrived and she boarded, sitting back down in the corner and letting Celyn crawl up onto her lap._

_People stared at her now, but they were only chuckling or making "aww" noises towards her daughter, who leaned happily against Katrina despite being sticky with droid oil. _

_She rested her head on top of Celyn's, grasping her daughter's hand firmly from where it lingered near the hilt of her lightsaber. "What did I tell you about that?" _

_Her daughter stiffened for a moment in her arms, upset at being disciplined._

_"That it's only for stopping bad people," Celyn replied._

_"And?"_

_"And it's dangerous," her daughter finished, sounding out the last word syllable by syllable._

_Katrina suspected Celyn didn't completely understand what 'dangerous' meant, only that it kept her from doing what she wanted to do._

You're only a little girl, Celyn, _she added. _Someday, when you're bigger, I'll show you everything you want to see or know about.

_"Can I see where you and Dustil and Father go?"_

I hope you never have to see the places we've been, _she thought to herself, even though she knew that wasn't what her daughter meant._

_She meant the many times Carth was gone for weeks on end, why she was sometimes left in the care of one parent while the other was off on Jedi business, why Dustil wasn't around all the time._

_As of right now, her former Padawan was on another one of his frequent trips to Coruscant. He would cite meetings with the rebuilding Jedi Council, but Katrina suspected his visits had more to do with a certain up-and-coming HoloNet reporter known for her distinctive blonde curls._

_She smirked against Celyn's hair. She was as much a Jedi as ever, but she and the remnants of the Council were somewhat on the outs. __They had been willing to look the other way on a Jedi having a lover. Being married and having a child, however, directly violated the teachings of the Order._

Dustil better consider that on one of his next "meetings with the Council", _she thought wryly._

_He spent the majority of his time on Telos, however. Especially since they had discovered the abandoned enclave up on the planet's polar ice caps._

_"Whoever was here, they cleared out pretty recently," her former Padawan had noted on their first excursion into the complex, inspecting computer consoles with his foot and poking things with his lightsaber._

_"I can see why," Katrina had replied, her teeth chattering as her breath made pale white clouds in the air._

_She hadn't been surprised that the abandoned complex had escaped their notice. She felt only the sad, lingering presence of a wounded animal. If there had been Jedi here, there hadn't been many._

_"Maybe the weather's not the greatest," Dustil admitted, burrowing into the hood of his robes. "But this place would still work pretty well."_

_It had sparked Dustil's pet project- starting a Jedi Academy on Telos. The suggestion had surprised her, as he had shown no inclination to take on a Padawan of his own let alone start an entire Academy._

_"Sounds fine to me," Katrina had answered nonetheless. "As long as you don't ask me to do any seminars or become headmaster."_

_He had only rolled his eyes, and she doubted it would ever actually happen. It was probably just the 'Reconstruction Bug', as she had deemed it. Everyone on Citadel Station was infected in one way or another._

_"When is Father coming home?" Celyn said, her legs dangling over Katrina's, idly kicking the base of their seat._

_"Today."_

If that tanker stops living up to its name and gets back here in a timely fashion.

_The _Sojourn _was notoriously slow, despite being outfitted with the latest in defensive technology and being one of the flagships of the Republic Fleet._

_They didn't fight about him being away. She was gone often enough herself to make it a moot point. But t__hankfully no major military campaign had arisen in the past four years, and Carth mostly served as the figurehead of Republic presence in this region of the galaxy, conveniently operating out of the Citadel._

It's only the calm before the storm, _she thought, glancing out the window again. _They're out there. I can feel them.

And I have to stop them.

_"Will he be mad?" Celyn suddenly asked, glancing back at her._

_Katrina snorted._

No. He'll probably congratulate you on getting far enough to get oil all over yourself.

_"Father will be glad to be home, and he'll be glad to see you." _

_Her daughter nodded, poking the scars around Katrina's hands with her own small ones._

_"I'm going to leave soon," she added, wrapping her arms more securely around Celyn. She could feel the little girl frowning. "On the big, long trip I told you about." _

_"Don't talk about that, Mommy," her daughter muttered, holding Katrina's hand possessively._

_But it would have to be soon._

_The attack on Telos four years ago had been proof enough that there was something else at work, something the Republic was choosing to ignore in favor of stabilizing themselves and rebuilding from the war. The information she was slowly piecing together through Dustil and Bastila was only more proof. _

_The boy who had accosted her this morning was a final reminder that she couldn't put it off any longer than she already had._

Because you won't always be four years old, _she thought, gently lifting Celyn off of her lap as the shuttle reached the residential unit. _Four-year-olds don't cover galactic history in school, but older kids do.

And what's going to happen to you when you get to that page in the history books that has my name on it?

_She couldn't rewrite them. And as much as she wanted to tell everyone as easily as she had the boy on the shuttle that, yes, she _was_ Revan; she understood that that was impossible. _

_Celyn slipped from her hand as they entered the apartment, scampering off to her room to play or more likely take another toy apart. There was a message waiting for her on the communications console- the droids had been found and retrieved. She wrote a quick note of thanks to Mission and Zaalbar._

_She couldn't rewrite them, but she could make as many new pages as she wanted. And she would start by this trip to the Unknown Regions. _

_By ending what Lord Revan had started. By ending what _she_ had started._


	2. Chapter 1

The comlink vibrated against her thigh and she slapped it absent-mindedly, like that might make it shut up. It vibrated again, the muffled words of whoever was trying to call her tickling her skin.

Her hand slipped into her pocket and retrieved the comlink, holding it up to her lips as though ready to answer.

After a moment's hesitation, however, Sarii Zhen turned and chucked it into a nearby flowerbed.

It bounced a few times and settled at the base of a tree, and she could barely make out the low, masculine voice of whoever was still chattering away on it, trying to get her attention.

_Atton or Mical, _she thought, putting her hands back in the pocket of her robe and walking faster until the sound of the comlink was gone, replaced with the din of Coruscant.

The courtyard of the Jedi Temple was full of people- arriving and departing Jedi, newsvids trying their best to cover the restoration of the Temple despite the Order's refusal to allow them inside the building.

And even if it wasn't, all Sarii would have to do to find a crowd would be to walk a few meters or so towards the nearby docks. Or just look up at the sky; at the hundreds of speeders and ships weaving through the Coruscanti traffic lanes and the high rising towers of the city-planet.

"_Feel this moment, for as long as it will last. Feel life, as it is, with the crude matter stripped away."_

Sarii carefully avoided some intrepid reporters, who were cornering anything in a light brown robe. Hers was brand new, and it itched uncomfortably around her neck. She shoved some of her ginger colored hair in between skin and fabric.

She sighed, trying to ignore the fact that she liked wearing brand new Jedi robes; that she liked her lightsaber hitting her in the thigh, swaying back and forth as she walked.

The Force and the people generating it were like a protective blanket. In a throng of people, there was no one to pick her out from the crowd. There was no distinction between her and any other 'Master Jedi'.

Here there was no one to darken the line between Jedi and Exile.

She liked being able to feel the millions of sentients around her. She even liked being able to feel one in particular that she knew very well, coming up quickly behind her. Sarii frowned. It hadn't taken long for one of them to find her. They always did.

This time it was Atton. He was easy to pick out from the rest of the beings around her- he was the only one that radiated blank, the only one that was a series of numbers instead of feelings; astrogation charts instead of emotions.

He jogged up beside her, catching his breath and straightening his ribbed jacket.

"You're walking at breakneck speed there. Late for something?"

"Not that I know of," she answered, hoping he wouldn't mention the comlink.

"Found this back in the bushes." _No such luck._

Atton tossed it once before brushing some dirt off of it and replacing it in his pocket.

"You scared the hell out of your Padawan with that one. He's off looking for you right now."

She glanced around, finding no sign of Mical, and she looked back up at Atton quizzically.

"He might've been…pointed in the opposite direction," the pilot replied, scratching behind his ear and smirking.

"_He cannot help but love you in his way. It is a pure, ideal love he holds, strengthened by your presence and your actions."_

_Which is exactly why I avoid him, _Sarii thought guiltily.

Things like that- like the fact that she avoided her own Padawan whenever possible, made that line between what she wanted to be and what she was glaringly obvious.

It wasn't entirely her fault of course; when she had agreed almost a year ago to train him, she had had no way of knowing that Mical, a disciple of the Jedi Code and a devotee of the Order; blond haired and blue eyed and unwilling to betray his principles would develop a rampant crush on her. One that would betray those principles if he ever acted on it.

He wouldn't, she knew, but it didn't change the fact that it was damn awkward having a Padawan who practically batted his eyes at you.

_Yes, it is awkward, isn't it?_

Sarii blushed slightly at the familiar voice in her head.

_That was…completely different, Master Kavar. I didn't…I mean, I never-_

"Hey, your face is starting to match your hair there," Atton murmured. "You don't have some hot date you're not telling me about, do you?"

She rolled her eyes at him.

"Well that's good to hear," he continued. "Because you have another one you have to go on anyways."

"And I suppose you're going to say it's you?"

Only after she said it did she realize how condescending she sounded; how completely awkward she had made the silence that followed.

"_He has nothing to offer one such as you- and even a fool such as Atton is not so ignorant of that fact."_

"Nah," he finally said, laughing shakily. "Just you and maybe five or ten old men."

"Sounds charming," Sarii added quickly.

"I've heard the Jedi Council always is."

They turned around and headed back towards the immense spires of the Jedi Temple.

"How's the ship?"

Atton exhaled up against his forehead, rustling his dark brown hair. "I'm running out of spit, though I've got a lot of bailing wire left. Should be able to get us off the planet."

"Until, you know, we hit space and every major system starts failing," he added.

"Your glass of juma juice is always half full, isn't it?" Sarii replied, smirking.

"Hey, believe me, I'm hoping just as much as you that the damn thing is patched together enough to get us out of here," Atton said, holding up his hands in surrender. "I never thought I'd say this, but I'm really tired of Coruscant."

She wasn't. As long as there were a lot of people, she would never get tired of any place.

But she could understand why the rest of them were probably tired of sleeping on the battered freighter's bunks; slowly repairing the damage done from crashing on Dxun, outrunning firefights above Onderon, being hammered in the battle at Telos and, of course, Malachor Five.

It had been almost a year since they had been towed back to Coruscant after their last mission, and she had spent that time trying to help the Order and train her Padawan. She supposed it might have been cheaper and quicker to just save up some credits and buy a whole new ship instead of waiting until they had earned enough to repair their broken one.

But the _Ebon Hawk_ was like Coruscant or Nar Shaddaa- too full of life. She could feel the memories of everything and everyone that had happened upon its scorched metal flooring, from a strange sense of comfort whenever she stepped inside its small sickbay to the energy that radiated in the center of the ship- whatever had happened there too strong to fade away.

"Tired of Coruscant?" she repeated dumbly, trying to think of a way to phrase her next suggestion that wouldn't make it sound like she didn't want him around any more.

"I know, I know, there's nothing keeping me here if I am, right?" he beat her to it, frowning.

It wasn't that she didn't want him around. She did.

"_I killed her because I loved her."_

And that was the problem.

"Nothing keeping you here? Who's going to fly my ship?" Sarii said, glancing sideways at him.

He returned it somewhat suspiciously.

"I guess there's always that."

Mical stood near the entrance to the Jedi Temple. He bowed his head slightly as she approached.

"Good afternoon, Master."

"You found me," she murmured, shooting a dirty look towards Atton, who didn't seem the least bit apologetic.

"I knew you would return to the Temple to meet with the Council eventually. A far more efficient choice than wandering around the upper levels of Coruscant looking for you."

His affable smile cooled, raising an eyebrow over her head at the pilot.

"In the wrong direction, I might add."

"Right…well, now that you're back in your natural habitat and everything, I'll get back to the ship and find something else to break," Atton said, turning sharply back in the direction of the docks.

Sarii headed into the Temple, beginning the path to the Jedi Council meeting chambers. "Do you know what this is about, Mical?"

He shook his head. "No, Master. The Council only requested an urgent meeting with you within the hour. I believe it to have something to do with our discoveries at the Trayus Academy on Malachor Five, though it's only my own speculation."

She tried not to like the fact that she was a Jedi in brand new robes, walking with her Padawan to a meeting with the Jedi Council; even though thoughts like that were better than thinking of the Trayus Academy, than thinking of Malachor Five.

"_It is ancient, a relic that survived the destruction of Malachor. It was always here, far before the Mandalorian Wars."_

_Sarii couldn't keep herself from staring at him like he was deranged; a beast made of pieces of flesh giving her the history of the building between sparring._

The Council chambers were restored first; to inspire the quickly recruited apprentices and Padawans, to give hope to the scarred Jedi who came limping back to Coruscant after the assassin situation had calmed down.

It was as beautiful as she had found it when she was chosen and assigned a Master, when she was knighted, and even when she had been cast out.

"Jedi Sarii, Padawan Mical."

The chairs and decor hadn't changed, but the men and women who sat in them had.

"Members of the Council," Sarii replied, bowing slightly as she reached the center of the room.

It was easy to remember the old rituals, like dances your feet never quite forgot. _Bow, greet, keep your mind clear and open, stand with your feet apart and your hands clasped behind you-_

"Do you know why we have called you before us?"

It was easy to remember other things too. She exercised control and forced herself not to cringe. "No, Master Ahniuk."

The Twi'lek nodded, resting his salmon colored hands on his chair. "The Council is prepared to hear your testimony."

"My testimony?" Sarii repeated.

"We figured it was about time we discussed a little place called Malachor Five ."

Even Master Bindo's unadorned speech couldn't make 'Malachor Five' sound any less foreboding. Sarii glanced at the old Jedi, who sat leaning forward with his hands resting on his knees.

"Is there a problem with this request, Jedi Sarii?" the soft voice of Master Korr, a female Zabrak, added.

"No, no problem, Master Korr. I just wonder what's sparked the Council's interest after almost four years."

At first she had thought they were just going easy on her; giving her time to adjust before beginning an interrogation on what had happened during their long battle against three rising Sith Lords. They had been too busy choosing members to form a new Council anyways; restructuring the Jedi that remained and trying to regroup. Then a year had passed, and then another, until Sarii had assumed that they didn't consider whatever the Trayus Academy represented a threat.

The members of the Council exchanged glances and looked expectantly at her.

"That's…a large topic, Master," Sarii finally began. "Is there something specific you'd like to discuss?"

"We have already heard your account of how the Jedi Master once known as Kreia turned to the dark side-"

"_Is that what she was? Or was she always true to herself, no matter what personality she wore?"_

"-And became Darth Traya. We know of how she murdered Masters Vrook, Kavar, and Zez-Kai Ell. We have heard of your battle against her cohorts, Nihilus and Sion. The Council wishes to hear your account of the final confrontation on Malachor Five, and of this Academy that stood on its surface," Ahniuk murmured.

_You're on, Padawan._

Mical reacted immediately, one datapad held out in front of him more for reference than anything else.

"The Trayus Academy is believed to have been standing on Malachor since the Mandalorian Wars, though its existence is speculated to have been since the very earliest of the Jedi archives were written."

"_It has been here for thousands of years-"_

"It was once a place of teaching and sanctuary to the ancient Sith- the very first Lords who arose when their strength in the Force was combined with the knowledge of how to use it from the Dark Jedi who defected from the Order."

"_It is a place where Sith teachings run strong…it is the threshold of the borders of an ancient empire. The teachings here will lead one to the Sith- the true Sith, and all their shadowed worlds." _

"Our conclusion upon battling Nihilus, Sion, and Traya is that they were students of these ancient ideals- those of the true Sith."

"_It draws death and hate to it, channels it. Many Jedi have been consumed by it."_

"How these teachings were brought back to the galaxy from the fringes of known space is a mystery. They focus on turning Jedi rather than murdering them, on conversion and persuasion rather than power by supremacy and strength of arms."

"_It is not mercy. What awaits you will weaken you. She will break you, turn you, as she did me, and you will no longer know yourself."_

_She tried to tell herself that it was resolve, not fear, that made her finally strike her killing blow against Sion's chest._

"Darth Traya used these methods of control on the members of the former Council; Vrook, Kavar, and Zez-Kai Ell. She convinced them that Master Sarii was a threat to the Order and to the survival of the Force, and that they had the power to break her connection to the Force. When they gathered on Dantooine to attempt this procedure, Traya murdered them."

_Sarii felt her lower lip trembling, but her hands suddenly couldn't find her lightsaber. They shook against her belt as she saw Masters Vrook, Zez-Kai Ell-_

_Even Kavar, his face impassive and his blue blades parallel at his sides._

_"Master-" she stammered._

_"Do not be afraid," he said; so calmly, like it was just another lesson to Padawan Zhen. "You shall feel no pain. As long as you feel the Force, you are a danger to those around you."_

"Do you agree then, Jedi Sarii, that this threat of the true Sith is real?" Master Korr finished.

"I do, Master Korr," she answered readily. "The Sith we've dealt with until now are a belief, and their beliefs don't follow the methods that Nihilus, Sion, and Kreia-"

"_I have used you. I have used you so that you might become strong, stronger than I."_

She shook her head.

"-Traya used against their enemies. Superiority through manipulation. These ideals came from somewhere else."

Sarii stood quietly, waiting as the members of the Council collectively nodded. She could sense them trying to decide who would be the one to pose the next question to her.

"Our interest in this subject is not without sufficient grounds, Jedi Sarii," Ahniuk continued. "The Council has become increasingly aware of the possible threat to the Order and the Republic growing the Unknown Regions. Recently we have been reminded of what it might claim should it ever reach the Republic by Jedi Dustil-"

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mical look up sharply, as though he recognized the name.

"Minor details, Ahniuk," Master Bindo interrupted, the look he shot to the Twi'lek making it obvious that the rest of Jedi Dustil whomever's name was no minor detail.

"Jedi Sarii," Ahniuk began again, narrowing his eyes at Bindo but continuing all the same. "Are you aware of the fate of Revan?"

"Revan?"

_Don't repeat words. It's a bad habit you have, repeating words. Don't shuffle your feet, don't look at the ground, you're in front of the Jedi Council, show them your respect-_

"I had heard she was redeemed after the destruction of the Star Forge, and that she traveled to the Unknown Regions to seek out the threat of the true Sith."

Korr nodded. "It was not the decision of the Council-"

"She went on her own," Sarii finished.

Even the Jedi knew little more than the rumors that still occasionally rose up on Coruscanti newsvids. Revan had killed Malak, blew up the Star Forge, and then disappeared. It was a short history, but Sarii knew it nonetheless.

_Like every kid knows her name now. Like how she's in the history books like we all knew she would be, savior of the galaxy, all of us sitting at her right hand, mentioned somewhere underneath Malak and Saul Karath-_

It hadn't quite turned out the way Sarii remembered thinking it would.

"Forgive me, Masters," she added brusquely. "But what does Revan have to do with the Trayus Academy? What does this have to do with me?"

"Revan refused the help of other Jedi," Master Bindo murmured. "Even her own Padawan was left behind-"

"Her own Padawan?" Sarii interrupted.

_She had no Padawan. Only Jedi have Padawans, not Dark Lords._

"Former Padawan, excuse me," Bindo continued smoothly. "There's been hide nor hair of her for months-"

"Months? Revan is believed to have been absent from known space for at least eight years," Mical added, glancing at her.

Sarii couldn't help but notice her reflection staring back at her from the glass window behind Master Bindo- her features scrunched up in confusion like an angry kath hound pup.

"Enough of this," Ahniuk interrupted sharply, eying Bindo from across the room. "The Council charges you with a task, Jedi Sarii. You are to seek out Revan in the Unknown Regions and inform the Council of her fate, as well as what she may have discovered of this Sith threat."

"What?"

Her voice echoed off the pillars of the Council chambers, one indignant octave higher than normal.

"The Council feels that your experience in fighting these…new Sith ideals and beliefs will aid you against whatever awaits the Order. Sending any other Jedi would surely be sentencing them to their deaths."

For a moment, Sarii wanted to pull out her lightsaber again, extend it; watch the Masters hold their breath.

But instead of stabbing it into the central pillar which was no longer there, she wanted to fling it at every single one of their arrogant, secretive heads.

"Members of the Council," Sarii began slowly. "Let me get this straight. I was exiled from the Order, made to give up my lightsaber, told I was no longer worthy to be a Jedi _because_ I joined Revan and Malak in the Mandalorian Wars."

_Master, calm yourself-_

_You don't understand, Mical, _she snapped, and he nodded respectfully.

_Your Padawan's showing more control than you. You're in front of the Council, show them your respect-_

Her tone had fallen back into derision, but she had too much momentum to stop now.

"And now you're _asking_ me to follow her on a dangerous mission into unexplored space with too many question marks for you to send another Jedi?"

Her outrage must have been plain on her face. The members of the Council looked scandalized.

"It does sound a lot worse when you put it like that." Except for Master Bindo, who watched her reactions without a trace of shock.

_They should know better. Jedi should know better than to-_

"Your thoughts betray you, Exile," Korr interrupted. "Jedi should know better? Better than what? We assumed you would be willing to embark on a journey to find the woman you found inspiring enough to defy our predecessors."

"Well, I-"

'Exile' rung loudly in her ears, though Korr had not been loud enough to make an echo in the room.

Sarii stopped herself, straightening up.

"I'm very sorry, Masters, but I have to refuse your request."

_Still defiant?_

_Expecting me to follow orders to do what I was exiled for is plenty grounds for defiance, Master Kavar, _she shot back to the ghost.

"Indeed. That is most astonishing, Exile," Ahniuk grumbled.

They were all using 'Exile' all of a sudden, and she didn't like it one bit. Her fingers traced the lines in her palm, and she tried to think of how many lines were there, how many cards were used in Pazaak-

"Revan's influence ended when she and Malak turned to the dark side. I will not follow her anymore, whether it's into battle or to drag her back from a solo mission."

_I won't follow her anymore. I did the right thing. I chose for myself._

"Are you certain, Jedi Sarii?" She thought she might kiss old Master Bindo for using her name. "If you refuse, the Council won't ask you again."

"_You must go where Revan did, into the Unknown Regions, where the Sith, the true Sith, wait in the dark for the great war that comes."_

"I'm certain, Master Bindo. Send someone else. Her…Padawan, perhaps."

_No Kreia, I won't follow you anymore either. I will not be used to deceive both the Sith and the Jedi, to manipulate the Republic, to make you feel better about your failures._

_I've got enough of my own._

"Will all future requests of the Council be answered in this way, Exile?" Ahniuk murmured. "Should this threat escalate into a war, will you abandon the Order then as well?"

"No, Master Ahniuk. Unlike your predecessors, I don't abandon those in need," Sarii forced herself to bow, sharp and clumsy as she turned quickly on her heel and exited the chambers.

The Jedi Temple suddenly had never seemed so expansive and never-ending. She practically sprinted to the exit, sighing in relief when she was finally back outside in the courtyard.

Mical wasn't far behind.

"Sarii," he finally murmured, reaching for her shoulder.

Despite being a few years younger than her, he was both taller and more solid. She glanced up at his blue eyes that had crossed the line from Padawan to Disciple.

Her line was still between Jedi and Exile, and she knew which side she wanted to be on. Sarii waved him off, slipping out from under his hand.

"I'll be all right, Padawan. It's a handy opportunity for a lesson. The Council isn't always right."

"Do you still believe that?"

_Did I ever believe it?_

Sarii decided it was better not to answer, and instead continued towards the docks, towards the _Hawk._

The battered freighter stood out from the others; not because it was a legendary ship or because of its sleek design, but because most of its hull was blackened or the slate grey of steel, its finish and paint job long scratched and scorched off.

The gangplank creaked as they stepped over it, groaning with the effort of having to provide a walkway for perhaps the thousandth time.

Mira glanced up from where she was sitting in the middle of the ship, feet propped against the holoprojection table. "'Bout time. Maybe you can talk some sense into Atton. I think he's got cabin fever or something." The bounty hunter toyed with her wrist launcher, adjusting it with a few tools sticking out of her boot.

"What's going on?"

Mira shrugged. "Beats me. He keeps babbling about Republic High Command. Maybe all the strenuous months of juma juice, Twi'lek dancing girls, and Pazaak have gone to the boy's head."

Sarii stepped over the half-repaired computer panel near the corridor to the cockpit; its wires and mechanical components scattered across the floor.

"Something up?" she said mockingly to Atton, who turned in the pilot's chair from where he had been bent over the controls.

"You and the Council play nice?"

Sarii said nothing, sitting down in the co-pilot chair.

It was the most comfortable place on the ship. She felt innately right in it; like it had been built for a female Jedi and no one else.

"I guess that's a no," he added after a moment's silence.

She couldn't picture Atton anywhere else either. His chair carried the vague scent of sweat and hostility.

"What's this I hear about Republic High Command?"

Atton cocked his head to the side, raising his eyebrows. He punched a few buttons, leaning back in the chair and folding his arms.

"You've got some friends in high places."

Sarii glanced at the screen in front of her where Atton had brought up an official looking message, headed with the seal of the Republic and the standard disclaimer for military communication.

_THIS MESSAGE IS CLASSIFIED AND INTENDED ONLY FOR THE ADDRESSED RECIPIENT. ANY ATTEMPT TO DECODE THE MESSAGE'S ENCRYPTION WILL RESULT IN CHARGES OF TREASON AND TAMPERING AGAINST THE REPUBLIC._

She remembered the heading from her days as a General and found that she could almost recite it.

_I was a General. A nineteen-year-old General._

It called up both her titles, past and present:

_Jedi Knight Sarii Zhen  
__General Zhen of the Republic Army:_

_You are ordered to report to Citadel Station, orbiting the planet of Telos. The assistance of the Jedi is required and the details of your mission will be discussed pending your arrival._

The message was terse and to the point, in the usual militaristic style. Sarii knew it had been written by a secretary rather than the standard holoprint at the bottom of the message:

_Admiral Carth Onasi_

"What do you make of that, _General?_" Atton murmured.

"What do I make of it? I make that it's an order from Republic High Command. I'm still a member of the Republic."

_They didn't exile me, at least._

"So I guess we're going back to Telos again," Atton muttered, putting a leg up on the bulkhead. "Not the first place I wanted to go once we got this thing cobbled together again."

She didn't really want to either. She had a pretty good idea what the "mission" had to do with.

"_I served with her, like you did. And we had to part, like you did."_

But anything was better than staying here and enduring the Council's disappointment, worrying that she only had to give them another reason to take her lightsaber away again.

Sarii grasped her double blade protectively, a bitter smile crossing over her face.

"It's not the destination that matters, Atton; but the journey."


	3. Chapter 2

"Admiral Onasi?"

He glanced up from where he stood near the windows of the _Intrepid_. The Republic capital ship looked out over Citadel Station from where she was docked, blocking one or two modules from sight.

"Admiral Dodonna will see you now, sir."

Carth nodded, running a hand through his hair before concealing it under his hat; tugging on the front of his uniform and breezing past the lieutenant who had admitted him.

He had been surprised the uniform still fit him at all. It had been sitting in his closet for at least six months, collecting dust and declined command opportunities.

_Little snug around the gut, _he thought with a rueful smirk. It was a pretty unrealistic expectation to hold onto the abs and pectorals of a Captain when he was an Admiral fast approaching fifty. Most exercise he got these days was chasing after a five-year-old.

But despite all the office hours, admiralty still had its perks. One was being bumped straight to the head of line for a meeting with one of the heads of the Fleet.

Another was that he wasn't required to tell anyone other than the woman sitting at the desk in the back of the office he entered exactly why he'd scheduled the meeting at all.

Forn Dodonna stood as he approached the desk, taking his salute with a curt nod of her head.

"Carth. It's good to see you again."

"Likewise, Admiral," Carth replied, clasping his hands behind his back.

Dodonna smiled, reseating herself.

"All business today, it seems. Well, let's hear it. How are things going on the Citadel? I haven't heard anything of another attack. Telos's reconstruction seems to be going smoothly."

The Citadel…well, the Citadel never changed. It just spawned more and more modules, and even he and half the Lieutenants of the TSF couldn't keep track of them all.

He'd been down to the surface of Telos, however, and what he saw made him happy if not out of place. It wasn't exactly the home he remembered- there were canyons and hillsides that hadn't existed decades ago, plants and animals he couldn't remember smelling or avoiding.

"Reconstruction's going fine. The Ithorians are upping their percentages almost weekly, and the first residential complex is almost finished."

_Not that it'll mean much in the long run, _he thought, rolling his eyes. Only the obscenely rich or influential could afford one of the housing units; built for publicity and symbolism. Like every other Telosian on the station, he'd briefly entertained the idea of getting one. Unlike every other Telosian, he had both the credits and the influence to make it a reality.

_I don't want it without her. Besides,_ _she probably doesn't want to live on Telos for the rest of her life-_

"I've heard something about a certain young man running an excavation up on the polar ice caps too."

The only other construction going on was private and out of the Ithorians' jurisdiction. It was being conducted by a number of men and women in light brown robes, coordinated by the Jedi Council. When finished, there would be quite a lot of Jedi traffic on Citadel Station; masters, padawans, apprentices and eventually a mini-Council in charge of affairs at the Telos Jedi Academy.

The snow from the boots of the leader of the construction left a wet trail in his apartment nearly every day. _Dustil never could remember to wipe his shoes off. _

Carth smiled proudly.

"Jedi Knight Onasi's determined when he wants to be. Me, I would have just left it an icebox." He chuckled along with Dodonna.

"Still giving you grey hairs, I see," his commanding officer murmured, glancing at the patches of slate creeping into his dark brown hair behind his ears.

"No more than you," Carth replied with a smirk. Forn's hair, once the color of rust, was now completely white.

Dodonna's fingernails tapped on the glass surface of her desk as she nodded. He kept his hands behind his back and his posture straight, even though he could feel her eyes narrowing on him, her scrutinizing gaze taking him back to his days as a Captain.

"And the _Sojourn_? She's due for a few hyperdrive upgrades soon, so you can tell your officers to stop barraging the Department of Fleet Readiness and Logistics with complaints about her speed."

"She's making pretty good time to Onderon from what I've heard."

Dodonna frowned.

_Probably shouldn't have reminded her that I've passed on the opportunity to command the _Sojourn _at least twice in the past month._

"Well, Admiral Onasi," she finally replied, sitting up in her chair and leaning forward over the desk, folding her hands over her computer console. "I'm at a loss to understand then just why you requested this high priority meeting with me. Sounds like both the station and the ships under your command are doing fine."

Her voice was dry and formal. Carth tried to keep his face as impassive as he could.

"I'm here to propose a covert operation, Admiral Dodonna. In regards to the possible Sith threat brought to our attention by Republic agents and members of the Jedi Order."

Dodonna sighed heavily, and he struggled not to let his shoulders slump. He was reasonably sure of how this was going to turn out.

_You're just a soldier; you give them your name, rank, and serial number. Nothing else. Certainly not how damn much you need her to approve this mission._

"The Sith are believed to be massing somewhere in the Unknown Regions, specifically regions one and two, outside the Atravis and Vara sectors. I'm proposing a mission to ascertain the threat to the Republic, one that doesn't risk the lives of an entire crew or take a ship away from the Fleet."

He retrieved a datapad from the pocket of his jacket, handing it to her. Dodonna took it wordlessly.

"The datapad contains a complete proposal for the execution of this mission, as well as suggested personnel, required clearances, and a contingency plan if it happens to fail."

Admiral Dodonna glanced over it, one eyebrow rising higher and higher as he watched her eyes go from line to line.

"I see you've listed yourself as commanding officer."

He nodded.

"And listed no other personnel to accompany you," she added sharply.

"That's your prerogative, Admiral. I'm requesting your permission for an extended leave of absence to begin this mission."

To no great surprise of Carth's, Dodonna shook her head.

"We're in a fragile position, Carth. The Republic is finally gaining some semblance of stability again. You're one of my top officers. I can't afford to lose you right now."

"With all due respect, Admiral," he continued, keeping his hands clasped behind his back, making his voice carefully neutral. "Unless we start giving this threat its due attention, we could have another war on our hands in a few years."

Dodonna's grey eyes, which looked more and more critical the whiter her hair got each year, bore down on him.

He struggled to remind himself that they were the same rank, that he had no reason to start squirming like a nervous recruit.

"You and I have had this conversation before, Carth," she murmured in a low voice.

"About six months ago, Admiral," he replied evenly.

_When her transmissions stopped. When the last thing I got from her was: "Found your homing device today. HK used it for target practice. Love you."_

Carth had reacted immediately, coming straight to Dodonna, requesting his leave and his clearances. And been denied both.

Admiral Dodonna stood, folding her arms and stepping out from behind her desk.

"It is my understanding, Admiral Onasi, that a representative of the Jedi Order has already been dispatched to discover the nature of this threat."

"Yes," he answered. It was easier than trying to explain to Dodonna that the Council hadn't sent her, that she was on some kind of mythical quest for a redemption he'd thought she'd already earned.

"And that that representative happened to be none other than Jedi Knight Katrina Onasi."

It made him feel oddly proud to hear his name attached to hers, even though the entire goal of this meeting was to get permission to rescue her from what he considered to be a really stupid idea.

"Yes," he repeated. Dodonna sighed again.

"Carth, may I ask you a personal question?" She paused only a moment, and then continued without waiting for his reply.

"Are you standing here in front of me because you're concerned for the Republic or worried about your wife?"

_Don't tell her how you wake up in the middle of the night, so sure you heard her come in. Don't tell her how your daughter has nightmares through the Force that you can't do anything about._

"I would hope that either would be enough reason for Republic command to consider my request," Carth said smoothly.

Dodonna scoffed.

"Republic command knew nothing of this. We weren't notified about her trip or her departure. To my knowledge, neither was the Jedi Council."

He watched her cautiously as she leaned up against the front of her desk, staring him down.

"The only ones who knew about this were presumably you and your wife. And it sounds as though even you don't know much more than the rest of us."

"That's why I'm proposing this mission, Admiral."

"She's been gone a long time, Carth," Dodonna added softly.

_One year and six months, almost to the day. _He sighed.

"What are you getting at, Forn?"

"I agree that there's a possible threat in the Unknown Regions that should be weighted and considered, as well as investigated. You, however, are not the man for the job."

His hands tightened behind his back and he frowned at her.

"Are you questioning my ability to do my duty?"

"No, I'm not-"

"Don't ever question me on that, Admiral," he interrupted sharply. "I lost a wife and almost a son to doing my duty."

The reminders still hurt, even a decade later. He used to wonder why he tortured himself by mentioning Morgana. Eventually he'd figured out that he was terrified of forgetting her.

"Don't presume to lecture me on duty, Admiral Onasi," Dodonna snapped, standing at her full height, almost taller than him but not quite. "I'm aware of your loss, just as I am aware of the losses of every other man and woman in this fleet. Many of these civilian deaths were incurred during the ending of the Mandalorian Wars and the beginning of the Sith War."

She glared at him for a moment as though he were to blame.

"A war that was, if you'll remember, brought about from two Jedi we thought we could trust. One of which is still alive and walks among us."

"Did it ever cross your mind that perhaps she's stopped sending you messages for a reason?" the Admiral continued without pause. "Other than the possibility that something's happened to her? Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps she's on her way back with a fleet, just like she was a decade ago after the last war?"

"That's completely ridiculous, Forn-"

"Is it?" Dodonna broke in, cutting him off in the middle of his outraged sputtering. "She's done it before, Admiral. Who's to say she isn't doing it again?"

"I don't trust her, Carth," she finished, folding her arms in front of her. "And it's been all I can do to keep my mouth shut all these years, to keep from doing _my _duty and informing the Republic that Lord Revan is still alive."

_Don't try and tell her she's wrong, that she doesn't know her like you do. Don't try and explain that if you can love her unreservedly despite the past, everyone else should be able to too._

He finally let his hands unclasp from behind his back, and he rubbed the sweaty palms against his trousers, lifting his hat and running a few fingers through his hair.

"How's your daughter?" Dodonna said suddenly. "Must be around six or seven. That's a good age."

Carth gave the Admiral a withering stare.

"Five. And she misses her mother."

_Carth blinked a few times, groaning and pushing himself up slightly. He waited until his pupils adjusted and he could make out the lines of his bedroom, the figure standing next to the bed, barely tall enough to reach him._

_"What's wrong, Jawa? Did you have a nightmare?"_

_She shook her head, grasping his arm through the covers again. It would have surprised him if she was. She didn't come to him with her nightmares anyways._

_"She's gone." Her voice was insistent, more surprised that he hadn't noticed yet then scared of whatever she thought was gone._

_He was half-asleep, he was getting older; for a moment he struggled to think of what she was talking about._

_Of course- she didn't come to him with her nightmares; she went to her mother. Her mother who was not Morgana, with long black hair and a dazzling smile._

_Her mother who was Katrina; Revan, a pair of direct hazel eyes and soft brown tresses._

_"No, Celyn, she's not gone yet," Carth murmured, sitting up in bed. "She's here, she's right-" _

_He gazed at the empty spot in the bed next to him, the outline of where her body had been lying what seemed only a moment ago. _

_Celyn whimpered quietly._

_"She left…" his daughter said. "She didn't say goodbye to me."_

_His half-conscious brain scrambled to figure out where she was, why there was the same tightness in his chest that he felt in his daughter's trembling body._

"_Mommy isn't going to leave without saying goodbye," Carth murmured, rubbing her back as she clung to him. "She promised, remember?"_

_Celyn only wailed into his chest, beginning to hiccup as tears gathered near her eyes._

_If Dustil had cried when he had left, Carth hadn't known about it. Celyn was born from the same proud, stubborn genes. She never cried either._

_Only at night, when she couldn't find her mother._

"She's your wife, Admiral Onasi," 'She' came out from Dodonna's lips like it was a particularly unappetizing pronoun. "And thus I can't trust you to be objective when it comes to dealing with her-"

"She's not a Dark Lord anymore. She hasn't been one for practically eight years now. You haven't had to 'deal' with her since-"

"I understand that. That's exactly why I've never said anything about her identity. That's why I've let you live your lives on Telos. But when she disappears and leaves no word for months- plenty of time to rebuild an army or recruit whatever Sith might be out there, I start to worry."

"If you're worried, then give me my leave and let me go find out," Carth said slowly, trying to keep the words from coming out like the impatient hiss that had been building in his stomach for six months.

"Look, Forn, I'm a soldier," he began tiredly. "If you order me to stay here, leading checkups on Rimward planets and watching the Citadel get fatter, I'll do it. But expect me back in this office as soon as my orders are fulfilled."

Dodonna studied him quietly.

"Your leave is granted, Admiral Onasi."

_Don't show her how relieved you are. Don't let her know that you were about five seconds away from resigning._

"That is, if you truly think it's going to benefit the Republic. That your departure isn't in your own self-interests," she added.

_When your wife's the former Dark Lord Revan, the two are pretty much the same thing._

"Thank you, Forn."

Dodonna waved him away, frowning. "You're dismissed, Admiral. I don't want to see you back in this office until we have some answers."

Carth nodded, saluting again and exiting the room. He deftly navigated the corridors of the ship- identical in design and layout to many of his own; through the airlock and back onto the Citadel.

He felt a thousand light-years better than he had stepping onto the _Intrepid_; so sure that he would be told that he was needed here, that he would be denied his request. So sure that he would hate himself for staying, for being unable to desert the Republic or shirk his duty.

Carth Onasi was not a man who broke promises. Either to a group, an individual, or even to himself.

_The light from the fresher blinded him for a moment as the door opened. Katrina stood in the doorway, watching them._

_Relief floored him, woke him up from his drowsy state._

_"Look, Jawa," he murmured in the little girl's ear, motioning towards Katrina. "She's not gone."_

_Celyn immediately began to wipe her tears, sniffling and trying to hide the fact that she'd been crying._

_Katrina walked over and picked their daughter up._

_"Mommy…don't go-" Celyn said, her voice reaching a petulant, temper-tantrum kind of tone. _

_"I have to go someday, Celyn. You know that." Her tone wasn't harsh, but it wasn't gentle either._

_Carth watched her carry Celyn out of their bedroom and through the sitting room. He waited until she had opened the door to the little girl's room, and then he pushed himself out of bed, crossing to where T3 sat regenerating in the corner. _

_He powered up the droid, who beeped inquisitively. Carth put a finger to his lips, glancing after Katrina to make sure she hadn't noticed._

_"Quiet, T3. I don't want her to hear. There isn't much time."_

He exchanged nods with a few TSF patrols as he passed them, breezed past a pair of women making eyes at him.

Carth smirked to himself. Had to appreciate the latter when he could get it- Years had passed, he'd collected more scars, and he was no longer the HoloNet heartthrob he used to be. There were more starry-eyed ensigns around him now than women.

The door to his apartment opened, and he hissed loudly as he tripped over a pair of boots.

"Oh, sorry." He glanced up at where Dustil was sprawled on the couch.

_Should have known, _Carth thought, glancing down at the standard knee-high boots of the Jedi Order again and noticing a small puddle beneath their heels.

The sight of Jedi robes flung over chairs and tables wasn't an irregular sight in his home. It had taken him time to get used to seeing Dustil with a lightsaber hanging at his side, but eventually that had become normal too.

"Hey, at least I took them off," his son added, sitting up and folding his hands behind his head.

"Good to have you home, Dustil. You get back from Coruscant early?"

"Yeah," his son murmured, standing up. "Yeah…"

Carth cocked an eyebrow, watching Dustil put his hands in his pocket. He had a vague memory of that exact look on his own face- that blissful smirk and faraway gaze, like there was an entire world only he could see- but it escaped him now just what that look meant.

"Are you going to tell me what the hell you're so happy about?" he prompted.

"She said yes," Dustil answered, grinning.

"Who?"

His son rolled his eyes. "Admiral Dodonna. Tova, Father! She said yes."

It took a moment to decipher exactly what it was Dustil was trying to tell him, and it slowly dawned on him that Tova's 'yes' meant that his son was getting married.

"That's great, Dustil," he replied, gripping his arm and patting him on the back. "Third time's a charm I guess, huh?"

His son smirked.

"I guess so."

_My son is getting married. My son is happy._

Dustil was still slightly shorter than him, clean-shaven and beaming like a twenty-something in love; a role Carth occasionally forgot the young Jedi Knight played.

"I bet…I bet Mom would be ribbing me about how many tries it took," Dustil suddenly said, glancing up at him.

_Our son is getting married. Our son is happy, Ana._

"She'd be so proud of you, Dustil," Carth murmured, giving him a sad smile.

There was no promise that could bring Morgana back. He wasn't about to make the same mistake twice.

_T3 hummed quietly in front of him, waiting for whatever instruction or message he was about to give._

_"She's got you and HK back and completely repaired. She's gathered all her information from the crew of the _Ebon Hawk. _She's found herself a new ship, had all the markings and ID signature changed, and it's practically stocked and fueled. Any day now…"_

_Carth paused, peering back through the doorway. He watched Katrina enter Celyn's room, closing the door behind her._

_"She's got that look in her eyes, T3," he continued furtively. "And every time I ask her to promise me she'll come back, she just walks away."_

_He sighed heavily, kneeling in front of the droid._

_"I can't accept that as an answer. She has to come back. Celyn needs her. I need her."_

_The words brought it home; that one of these mornings he would wake up and she would really and truly be gone, and he would be left with only his traumatized daughter and that flat outline in the bed next to him._

_"Now she's promised to send messages and coordinates as she goes, but I know her, T3. They're going to stop coming as soon as she finds these Sith she's looking for. She thinks she has to protect us, and she won't let me try and protect her anymore."_

_He rose and crossed to his nightstand, rifling for some tools and hurrying back to the droid._

_"I need you to be my eyes and ears, T3. Follow her everywhere she goes, even if she says she doesn't need you or tries to leave you on the ship. Watch out for her. Record anything you think is important. I'll encode this message in case she tries to do a memory wipe on you."_

_The droid hummed quietly, beeping once more._

_"If…if she's in trouble, you find a way to get help. If not me, then other Jedi, the Republic- do what you can. Reprogram HK to do the same if you have to."_

_He finished encoding the message, running his hand over the droid's scorched plating._

_"She's strong, but she can't do this alone. I only hope she figures that out before it's too late."_

_The droid beeped quietly as though he agreed._

_"I can't lose her, T3," Carth finished. "Even if she wants to be lost."_

"Father!" He turned to see his daughter bolt out of the doorway of her room and throw her arms around him.

'Father' rung in his ears. She'd picked it up from Dustil, and no one had ever bothered to correct her, not even him. He felt stupid trying to explain to a five-year-old why he'd rather be called 'Dad' or 'Daddy'.

"There was some kind of annoying buzzing in my ears when I got off the _Chaser_," Dustil said, winking at Celyn. "I think it was some Jawa trying to talk to me, but I'm not sure. So I went to her school and found her."

It was impossible to look at the impish smile on his daughter's face and not recognize the lines of her mouth; impossible to watch the way she burrowed into her neck when she laughed and not know who she had inherited it from.

_Carth powered down T3, heading to Celyn's bedroom._

_Katrina sat on the edge of the bed, leaning over Celyn. The little girl was no longer crying, but her arms were folded stubbornly in front of her, her lips curved into a tight frown._

_"But why?" she whined. "Why do you have to go?"_

"Because, son, I'm a member of the Republic Fleet," he murmured, ruffling Dustil's hair. "It's my duty to defend it from whatever threatens it. I'm trying to protect you and your mother."

_He remembered the sigh Katrina gave now; knew that it came from exasperation or sadness, and sometimes a little of both._

_"There are bad people in the galaxy, Celyn. People that want to hurt us. Do you remember what those people are called?"_

_"Sith," Celyn replied automatically. Katrina nodded._

_"And it's the job of the good people in the galaxy to stop them. Do you remember what the good people are called?"_

_"Jedi." _

_"That's right." Katrina looked away for a moment, out the windows of the station at the innumerable stars, the traffic of shuttles and ships of the Fleet._

_"Sometimes the good people make mistakes and they do bad things that hurt people."_

_"Why?" _

_"They don't know," Katrina replied hoarsely. _

_He forced himself to stand in the doorway, even as most of him wanted to grasp her shoulders, remind her that she was a good person, that he loved her, that she deserved this even if she didn't believe it._

_"Celyn, when good people do bad things, they feel very sorry for the things that they've done. And they want to fix it by helping people."_

_"You did bad things, Mommy," Celyn said softly._

_He didn't understand the Force. Certainly didn't understand how it could make a four-year-old grasp something that had taken Katrina the length of the Star Forge mission and years beyond to realize._

_"Yes, I did bad things," Katrina whispered, and she ran her fingers through their daughter's dark brown hair._

"How was school, Jawa?"

"Good. We watched the ship come in. Dima said it was a Republic capital ship," his daughter replied, sounding out the last few words.

Celyn pulled back from him, a frown suddenly on her face. "Is the ship that's here your ship?"

Carth shook his head. "No, it's Admiral Dodonna's."

"What's she doing here?" Dustil murmured.

"Routine inspection. I requested a meeting with her too."

Carth waited until Celyn lost interest in their grown-up conversations about Admirals and meetings and wandered back into her own room.

"Anything wrong?" Dustil continued as the door shut behind the little girl.

"_I feel very sorry for the bad things I did, Celyn," Katrina finally continued. "And I have to make up for it by helping people and stopping the Sith. Do you understand now why I have to go?"_

_Celyn sighed, yawning and burrowing further under the covers._

_"No. You're not bad, Mommy."_

_For a moment he nursed the faint hope that maybe Celyn could convince her, maybe Celyn could give her better reasons than he could for forgetting this whole thing._

_But the independence and petulant temper that his daughter had were inherited from her mother, who only shook her head again._

_"Not anymore. But I still have to go and fix the things I did when I was bad."_

_"Promise to come back," Celyn demanded._

_Katrina frowned._

_"Go to sleep now."_

_"Mommy-" There was an iciness unbecoming of a child in his daughter's tone. "Promise to come back."_

_"I promise…that I won't ever let anything bad happen to you, Father, or Dustil."_

_In a child's mind the two promises seemed to mean the same thing, and Celyn yawned again, dropping back into sleep._

_Katrina rose, stopping short as she noticed him standing in the doorway._

_He put his hand around her shoulder as she walked past him and back towards their bedroom. He traced the lines of long-incurred scars down her back and neck; lines his fingers had memorized._

_"I wish I could promise you that I'm coming back. I wish I could promise her that I'll be here whenever she needs me." Her words were sudden, abrupt, jarring. They hit him like a blaster shot to the stomach. _

_Or, more appropriately, to the heart._

_"You will be if you call off this whole plan and stay here."_

_She slipped out from under his arm, frowning._

_"Don't make this harder-"_

_"You're the one making it difficult on yourself."_

"You didn't happen to meet with the Council when you were on Coruscant, did you? The _real _Council, I mean," Carth added, smirking at the sudden redness in his son's cheeks.

"Not directly, no. Talked with Master Jolee about not getting kicked out of the Order."

_At long as Jolee Bindo's on that Jedi Council, there's going to be an influx of Jedi marriages, _Carth thought, rolling his eyes.

"So you haven't heard-"

"No," Dustil said, glancing up at him. "Is that what you met with Dodonna about?" He nodded.

"_This whole thing is because of what you think you owe to the galaxy," Carth continued, watching Katrina pace slowly back and forth. "You don't owe them anything, Revan. You made it all up when you turned back, when you killed Malak-"_

_"I didn't turn back," she snapped. "I couldn't even remember falling. How could I have turned back from anything? And Malak-" _

_Katrina trailed off, exasperated and idly pulling on her earlobe for a moment._

_"Look, I don't expect you to understand-"_

_"Make me understand," he interrupted. "Because you're not going anywhere otherwise." _

_Katrina folded her arms in front of her, raising an eyebrow in amusement._

_"Oh really?"_

_"I've got an entire fleet at my disposal, beautiful. If I want to keep you from going, all I have to do is say the word."_

_He was amazed at how threatening she could look even when clad in a short nightgown, her hair sleep tousled and without a weapon in her hands. He had a vague feeling that he should want to kiss her instead of wondering where his blaster was in case he needed it. Regardless, Carth stood his ground under her icy glare._

"_I've told you what kinds of tactics were being used behind the scenes in the wars. The conversion of Jedi. Changing their memories, manipulating their feelings, giving them doubts and making them turn. You know where I learned them from?"_

_She paused, giving him a disgusted look._

_"Or are you still pretending that I'm not the one that did all these things? That I'm not the one that started the Jedi Civil War? I brought ancient methods of betraying and converting the Jedi back to the galaxy, Carth. I single handedly began the extermination of the Order I belong to. These tactics hurt…very few Jedi turn away from them. Ask Dustil; he experienced them first hand. So don't try and tell me that I don't owe them anything."_

"She's alive, Father," his son murmured.

"How do you know?" Dustil shrugged, ambling around the room, inspecting items on tables and shelves that Carth knew he had seen a hundred times over.

"Bastila Shan and whatever bond they have can feel it. I can feel it. I'm sure Celyn can feel it too."

"Well, _I_ can't," he muttered. "And I'm going to do something about it."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Following through on my plans."

Dustil sighed exasperatedly behind him. "_What_ plans?"

"I'm going after her."

He felt his son's frown on his back as he crossed to his desk, idly shuffling through datapads and belongings, picking up his blaster and looking it over carefully.

"Revan? You don't even know where she is."

"I have the coordinates her last message came from, plus the signal from the homing device up until she found it. I helped her buy that damn ship she's in and I know it like the back of my hand. It might not be easy, but I'll find her."

"You're just going to leave the Fleet?"

Carth turned, raising an eyebrow at him. There was a sudden tension in the room, taut and sensitive to mentions of the Fleet, mentions of leaving.

"You're just going to leave Celyn?" his son added defensively.

"You'll watch her."

"Oh I will, will I?"

"She's your sister, young man," Carth snapped, taking his hat off and tossing it across his desk. "If I ask you to watch her, you'll watch her, got it?"

"She's _your _daughter, Father. But I guess leaving your children never was a big deal to you, was it?"

The tension snapped, leaving a resounding silence and a sudden bottomless canyon between where he stood on one side of the room and where Dustil stood on the other.

_I thought he forgave me. I thought all that was forgotten._

He heard Dustil sigh, and he realized that some things were never forgiven or forgotten.

"And what's going to happen if you don't come back, huh?" His son's voice was calmer, probably the result of his Jedi training kicking in. "Am I supposed to raise her too? What the hell am I supposed to tell her, Father, if both you and Revan die out there?"

_"Why isn't this enough?" Carth replied, trying to keep the rising volume of his voice under control, aware that Celyn was asleep a few meters away. "Why does your self-ordained redemption have to involve running off on your own to fight some threat you know nothing about? You're a great Jedi. Everywhere you go you help people. You brought Bastila back from the dark side. You saved Dustil- hell, you turned him into a half-way decent Jedi Knight too."_

_He grasped her tightened elbows._

_"Before you came along, I was planning on living out the rest of my days with the Republic, chasing Saul and eventually dying in battle somewhere."_

_"But…look around me…I'm an Admiral in the Fleet, Telos is practically rebuilt, I have my son back, I'm married again and I have a daughter. And I sure as hell didn't bring any of that about. It was all you."_

_"Isn't this enough, gorgeous? I'm happy…aren't you?"_

_For a moment, he'd thought he'd won. Katrina let his hands move around her waist, let him pull her closer to him._

_But he hadn't. She stopped him before he could kiss her._

_"I have to stop this. I started it; it's my responsibility." _

_Carth sighed heavily. "Then don't be stupid, Revan. We'll send the Fleet; scouts, Bothan spies, whatever's necessary. Take other Jedi with you. You don't have to do this alone-"_

_"It's not fair to put them in danger-"_

_"Everyone's going to be in danger if you can't stop them anyways-"_

_"No. There's only one way this is going to work, and it's if I finish what I started as a Sith. I contacted them, and I was planning on meeting with them. I have to go to that meeting alone, just like I was planning."_

_Words like 'alone' and 'Sith' frightened him more than any others, and he was suddenly desperate and panicked._

"_You don't have to do this," Carth repeated. "Celyn's not going to think any less of you. No one is-"_

_"I will," Katrina snapped, and he knew that the argument (this round, anyways) had ended, that it was time to go back to bed._

_He followed her wordlessly into their bedroom, back into bed and under the covers. She moved herself away from him, towards the edge of the bed, and he curled up on the opposite side, glancing at T3 in the corner._

The minute those messages stop, _he swore, _I'm coming after you, gorgeous. And I'm going to save you.

Even if it's from yourself.

Carth reached up to unhook the collar of his uniform, suddenly stiff and confining.

"If I stay, Dustil, if I don't go help her…" He sighed in frustration.

"What are you supposed to tell her? How about you tell me this, Dustil: what am I supposed to tell Celyn when she starts asking me why her mother had to die alone out in the Unknown Regions? What am I supposed to say when she asks me why I couldn't help her or at least try?"

He hesitated under Dustil's skeptical gaze. Carth took another deep breath, his voice low.

"Forget me leaving you. What would you have thought of me if, instead of crawling through the burning rubble on my hands and knees and screaming for a medic until I lost my voice, I had just left Morgana to die?"

Dustil's eyes were suddenly different, and Carth couldn't help but remember when he had seen that look on his son's face before.

_On Korriban. He was looking at me just like that, and if we hadn't managed to calm him down…_

Carth was a solider, and he had seen that hard look in the eyes of a thousand enemies. He knew what it meant.

"Right," he murmured nervously. "So I'm going after her. I'm not going to give both my children reasons to hate me."

Dustil sighed, running a hand through his hair.

"I don't hate you, Father-" he muttered.

"But you did. And I'll regret that for the rest of my life."

He idly moved things around on his desk, grateful for noise to counteract Dustil's contemplative silence.

"I still can't watch her," his son finally said.

"And why the hell not?"

"Because I'm going with you."

_To the Unknown Regions? To face a threat that might be larger than the galaxy itself and Sith that can touch you in ways they can't touch me because you're Force sensitive? Hell no, son._

Carth groaned, holding out a hand in protest.

"Dustil-"

"Father, you're dealing with Sith," Dustil began in what Carth was beginning to dub his 'Future Jedi Academy Headmaster' tone. "You need a Jedi with you if you're hoping to actually accomplish something and not get killed. If you think I'm going to let you run off by yourself just like she did, you've got another thing coming."

"I wasn't going to go alone," he replied defensively. "It's also an intelligence gathering mission for the Republic. We need know exactly what this threat might mean to all the non-Force users in the galaxy."

"Good. Then you won't mind if I come along."

"Come on, Dustil. Meet me halfway on this thing-"

"I don't go halfway on anything, Father. Sound familiar?"


	4. Chapter 3

"Has this Admiral ever heard of a chronometer?" Mira muttered, pushing herself up from where she leaned against the doorframe.

Sarii idly twisted a piece of hair around her finger, the déjà vu all too familiar to be ignored.

Once again she was on the Citadel. Once again, she was sitting in a room waiting for some official to inform her on what she was supposed to be doing.

_Once again, I'm going to be asked if I'll follow Revan. _She frowned.

Well, she'd deal with that once the Admiral arrived, assuming he ever did. They had been sitting there for the better part of an hour, and it was beginning to get to both the bounty hunter and Sarii herself; both of whom didn't much like feeling trapped.

Even Mical looked impatient, his posture stiff as he rolled his neck.

Atton gave a loud sigh.

"Atton, will you quit worrying about the _Hawk_ already?" Sarii called to where he stood near the window, tapping out random rhythms against the glass with his fingers.

"Hey, if it was that easy for a bunch of snow bunnies to steal it last time, I think I've got precedent for worry."

"The ship is still in a considerable amount of disrepair, Atton. I doubt it will attract any untoward attention," Mical added.

"Right," the pilot muttered derisively, "And when we get back to the dock and there's nothing but an empty hanger waiting for us, you can step right up and tell us where we're going to find another one."

"Rand's got a point," Mira said. "That Wookiee didn't find it too hard to get on board a year or so ago-"

"The ship was half torn apart. The gangplank was malfunctioning and you were the only one on board," Sarii replied, pushing herself up from the table and ambling around the room.

The bounty hunter rolled her eyes, scoffing.

"There were plenty of parts lying around for the hairball to salvage and sell on the black market, but he didn't touch any of them. Just took the droids."

"Just the droids," Sarii repeated. "Maybe he specialized in selling them or something."

_But they were Revan's droids…the HK model said so-_

"Perhaps the Admiral will be able to shed some light on it," Mical offered.

"You never did find out about those datapads, did you?" Sarii asked, turning to her Padawan. He shook his head.

_I think the Admiral will be able to tell us something about that too, _he replied, frowning.

Sarii stared at him questioningly but Mical offered nothing more.

"We are in the right module, aren't we?" she said, checking the datapad again. "Diplomatic Module 002-"

"I give this guy ten more minutes," Mira broke in, leaning over the table towards Sarii, "And then I say we hit the space lanes. I don't know how it works in the Republic, but I've learned that when a guy's late, it usually doesn't mean anything good-"

As if on cue, the doors of the waiting room they had been directed to finally opened. Instinct made her turn immediately, and she had a hard time keeping herself from saluting.

_That's because we were the ones that handled the Republic- the Jedi "Generals" and "Admirals" that Revan appointed. We dealt with the logistics of being in official armed forces, the nitty-gritty of commanding squadrons and platoons. _

_All she did was point us places with her lightsaber._

"I'm glad you came, Master Jedi. I wasn't entirely sure if I still had the authority to order you here or not."

She had only met Admiral Onasi once, but his face was easy to remember. Even in exile she had seen it plastered across the HoloNet and various newsvids; the brown hair that men across the galaxy had tried to imitate but could never quite pick the right two wayward strands to fall into their eyes.

"I'm still a member of the Republic, Admiral," Sarii answered readily. "It's the least I can do."

_Respect non-Force users. Respect the Republic. We learned that lesson very quickly- being a Jedi didn't mean a damn thing if you didn't have the brains and leadership to back it up. And if you didn't have them in a time of war, the people under your command paid the price._

_Revan didn't learn that lesson. We did._

_I did._

"Still, after all you've done for Telos and the Jedi Order, I can't imagine that you're itching to take on another fight."

"_You sought adventure, you hungered for battle. You could not wait to follow Revan to war."_

_"I went to war to protect others, Atris," Sarii forced through her teeth. "Not for battle."_

_It felt like the thousandth time she had had this argument. Only this time, there was another sentient on the accusing end of it, not her own battered conscience._

"Depends on what we're fighting for," Mira murmured.

"I guess this would be the rest of the crew of the _Ebon Hawk_," the Admiral prompted, looking over her shoulder at the rest of them.

"Mira," Sarii said, gesturing towards each in turn. "My pilot, Atton Rand-"

"Like how she flies?" the Admiral interrupted. Atton studied him suspiciously before replying.

"For a piece of junk, she flies fine."

Sarii watched Onasi narrow his eyes for a moment like he was willing to spend an hour or so debating Atton about that.

"-And my Padawan, Mical."

The two men nodded to each other.

"I won't waste much of your time, Master Jedi," Onasi continued, seating himself across the table from her. "You'll probably want to get started as soon as you can-"

_That's what you think, _she thought, biting her lip and nodding guiltily.

"And sorry for being late," the Admiral added, taking off his hat. "Had to settle a few things with my children."

_He has children? I guess he's old enough…but he's in love with Revan. Are they Revan's children? What the hell is going on-_

"What, exactly, are we getting started on here?" Mira said, turning a chair over and sitting on the back of it.

"All this talk about true Sith and ancient Sith has probably been common knowledge in the Jedi Order, but the Republic's become concerned about this threat. The attack on Telos seemed isolated, but we're not willing to take any chances."

Sarii tried to act more attentive than she was, sitting up straight and folding her hands neatly on her lap, nodding every few words.

In reality she wanted to get out of here, get off of the station, back onto the _Hawk_, get as far away as she could from anything that was close to the past, that was close to Revan or the Mandalorian Wars.

Admiral Carth Onasi was about as close as she could get.

"Under the jurisdiction of myself and Admiral Dodonna, we're beginning a mission to the Unknown Regions, where the Jedi Council's said that the Sith are massing-"

"Where Revan went," Sarii couldn't help adding.

"Revan?" Mira broke in, looking from her to the Admiral.

Only three words (well, probably just the one) had somehow thrown the Republic officer's momentum off track, and he watched her for a minute.

"Admiral Onasi, I know what you're going to ask me to do," she continued quickly, ignoring Mira and trying to ignore the look on the Admiral's face. "And I can't do it."

Onasi opened his mouth.

"No, I _can _do it," Sarii added, "But I won't. She's not my responsibility. Ten years ago I might have followed her. But it's not ten years ago anymore, and she's no longer the woman I thought she was. I'm very sorry for your…loss, but I'm afraid I can't help you."

"_She said that there were places where she had to walk where I could not go - places that she could not bring those she loved."_

_There were so many things she wanted to say. To ask him what woman he had known, if it had been the same woman who had cut down Mandalore, practically grinned as she stripped the surviving Mandalorians of their basilisks, ordered Sarii into the jungles of Dxun or the battles at Althir._

_But the way she would have phrased these questions would have only hurt him, and Revan had obviously done enough of that herself. So Sarii just nodded._

"Master Jedi," Onasi said, leaning back in his chair and raising an eyebrow. "I didn't say a word about her yet-"

"I'm sorry, sir, but I'm not going after her-"

"I'm not asking you to."

Five words (well, probably just the 'not') stopped Sarii dead in her tracks.

"To be honest, Jedi Zhen, I don't quite trust anyone else to chase her down except me. And that's what I'm doing."

"You're going after her?" Sarii sputtered. "No offense intended, Admiral, but after eight years, what finally made you-"

"Eight years?" Admiral Onasi broke in.

_Why the hell is he looking at me like I'm using carbonite as bath soap?_

"Does someone want to fill the rest of us in here?" Atton said loudly, leaning over her chair and staring down at her.

"That's what you said, Admiral. You said Revan left you after the Star Forge, and you had been waiting for her, and she went off by herself in the _Ebon Hawk_, and she asked you to stay and keep the Republic strong," Sarii replied testily, momentarily forgetting how lightly she had been treading around mentions of Revan, of her last conversation with the Admiral; forgetting her concerns about upsetting him.

There was a moment of silence.

"You bought that?" Onasi said in astonishment, any hint of officialdom disappearing from his tone and his posture.

_Well. I'm officially lost._

The Admiral seemed to fight for a few minutes against smiling, and finally caved on a scoff, running a hand through his hair.

"No offense intended either, Master Jedi, but I'm pretty damn surprised you believed me. I didn't think I was very good at lying."

_He was easy to read, and all she felt was that he missed Revan as much as he said he did, that he loved her more than he was telling. The onslaught of emotions made Sarii embarrassed, like something that personal shouldn't be so easily accessible, and she stopped probing his mind instantly._

"Admiral, are you suggesting that everything you told Master Zhen was a lie?" Mical said.

"Because you were pretty damn convincing if it all was," Sarii spat indignantly.

"Well…not…_everything_," Onasi murmured, rubbing his neck. "It's true she left, but she'd only been gone for a couple months, not four years-"

He scoffed again.

"Four years," the Admiral muttered under his breath. "Or for that matter, eight. Like I would have sat here just waiting around until she decided to come back. Hell, I was ready to find her after six months. I'm surprised I'm still here after even a year and a half-"

"Okay, let's stop all this talk about years and months and people leaving," Mira snapped. "Like everyone in the galaxy knows, Revan killed Malak and blew up the Star Forge. Like most people in the galaxy suspect, she's still alive and turned good in the end. Like a lot of Jedi are pretty sure of, she's off in the Unknown Regions fighting these Sith creatures no one seems to know much about. Now, when did she leave to go do this?"

"A year and a half ago." Onasi replied.

"Fine. Now, where was she when you gave Sarii here your little sob story about how she'd been gone for four years?"

The Admiral frowned but answered the bounty hunter all the same. "Then she was just in hiding-"

"In hiding?" Mical interrupted. "Where? From what?"

Onasi looked impatient, and he exhaled loudly. "The Jedi were being hunted down, in case you hadn't noticed. Like every other Jedi, she hid-"

"She's _not _a Jedi, she's a traitor!"

_Out the windows of the Republic cruiser Sarii and the rest of the party of Jedi could see the lines of three or four ships moving in a slow, deliberate pattern towards them. It was almost graceful, if you ignored the fact that she had a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach._

_"They've returned," One of her companions whispered. _

Of course they have, _she thought, rolling her eyes. Even the weakest of Force sensitives could have sensed Revan and Malak on one of those ships. _

_Sarii straightened her robes, made sure her lightsaber was properly attached to her belt. The Council was issuing calls for every Jedi who had fought in the Mandalorian Wars, the Republic had been quietly panicking as they tried desperately to recover from their losses despite their victory- everything had had a barely discernable scent of collapse while Revan and Malak had been gone._

_But now they had returned, and she couldn't understand why the panic was still in her stomach._

_"Unidentified ship, please respond," One of the communications officers called out again. The crew of the Republic ship seemed to get edgier with each passing second. _

_The other ship merely drifted towards them, silent and growing larger in the windows._

Revan?

_Sarii called her leader's name timidly. She had rarely been in casual conversation with the Jedi, and to use her name now, especially through the Force, felt awkward and far too intimate._

_What was more awkward, however, was the wall of silence that followed._

_This wasn't right. They could feel the two Jedi on the ship; knew they were there, but they didn't feel the same-_

_All at once, a flurry of red and green fire exploded out of the turrets that dotted the surfaces of Revan and Malak's new ships. She felt her jaw drop._

_The collective gasp from the bridge made even Sarii and her companions jump as they watched the tiny dots and lines of bright blaster fire slam into one of their accompanying Republic cruisers._

_The dead were immediately overwhelming, making Sarii wince and feel dizzy. It was utter silence on the bridge. The screams of the dying and the sounds of metal exploding apart were muted through the blackness of space._

_The captain of their ship opened his mouth a few seconds too late._

_"Move us out of-"_

_Their sister cruiser exploded in a bright flash of red and orange before their eyes. The ship they were on was rocked back from the impact of the other ship's destruction, and the bridge was overwhelmed with the noises of alarms and injured or panicking crewmembers._

Revan!

_It was indignant now, all traces of propriety or respect gone from Sarii's mind._

_The why's and the how's beat unmercifully against her skull, but Sarii ignored them, exchanging glances with one of her fellow Jedi as the captain of the ship barked out orders for retreat, for a quick hyperspace jump back towards Core space._

_She had fired on them. Their leader, Jedi Revan, had just destroyed a fully-manned Republic cruiser before their very eyes, and was powering up to destroy another one. _

The words hurled out of her lips from where they had wrestled their way through her cringing stomach and up her tightened throat.

_You're a Jedi, _she rushed to remind herself, seven words too late. _And they don't act like this. No matter what she means to you, she means something entirely different to him. Your Padawan is watching you, and if you get angry, he'll get angry-_

Already she could sense Mical holding the edges of the table in uncertainty, ready to rise and follow her out if storming back to the ship was going to be her next action.

_Apologize, be brave and be honest and apologize-_

"I'm sorry. That was uncalled for."

Sarii was reasonably certain this was one of the most awkward moments of her life, but it didn't stop her from making the words come out along with one long, deep, calming breath.

Onasi wasn't as handsome as he had obviously once been, but Sarii was pretty sure it wasn't all because of age. He seemed marred now by one too many scars; a few more worry lines than necessary:

The look in his eyes that made him seem a lot older than she thought he was.

"You've been honest with me, Exile. I'm sorry I haven't been the same way."

She found herself wondering how the atmosphere had changed so completely. At first it had been one General to one Admiral, politely declining an order; and now it was Jedi Knight Sarii Zhen's emotional baggage facing off against Admiral Carth Onasi's, one wounded pair of blue eyes against brown.

"I'm going to take my own personal ship and trace her back to where her last message was sent and the last position the homing device had her at-"

"You were really keeping tabs on her," Atton murmured, whistling.

"What, and if I knew she was going to go I should have just let her without any way of knowing where she was going or what she was going to do?" Onasi replied, rolling his eyes. "I guess that old reputation I used to have as a decorated war hero and a strategic commander isn't going around too much anymore."

_Okay, okay, so you're not completely confused, Revan's in the Unknown Regions just like you thought she was-_

"Why did she leave?" Sarii demanded.

"I don't completely understand why she left. My son's tried to explain it to me a hundred times, but either I'm not hearing him or I just don't want to listen-"

_His son? Who the hell is his son and what does he have to do with any of this-_

"By the way, he says he's sorry," Onasi murmured suddenly, smirking up at Mical.

"Your son?" Atton broke in.

"My son Dustil."

"_The Council has become increasingly aware of the possible threat growing in the Unknown Regions. Recently we have been reminded of what it might claim should it ever reach the Republic by Jedi Dustil-"_

"_Revan refused the help of other Jedi," Master Bindo interrupted, the look he shot to the Twi'lek making it obvious that the rest of Jedi Dustil whomever's name was no minor detail. "Even her own Padawan was left behind-"_

Mical exhaled, half frustrated and half relieved. "I hope he found whatever it was he was looking for, though next time he might consider asking."

Noticing the look on her face, her Padawan grasped one of his datapads out of his bag, waving it at her.

_Okay, _Sarii thought, trying not to look confused. _His son's Revan's Padawan, her Padawan stole Mical's datapads about our battles, that explains a little bit-_

"And the droids?" Mira piped up.

Onasi shrugged. "The droids were hers. She took them back."

"They were on _our _ship!" Atton said angrily, leaning over the table.

"Technically it's not _your _ship, kid," the Admiral replied smoothly. "You're just lucky Mission and Zaalbar decided otherwise."

At the mention of Mission, Sarii tried to sense what it meant to Atton, who looked shocked for a moment but quickly recovered into his usual scowl.

All she got for her trouble was a barrage of Pazaak numbers, and she frowned.

"Just lucky," Sarii repeated. "So she took my droids, stole my Padawan's research, and took off for the Unknown Regions, without you or your son, presumably her Padawan…how does any of this explain why you didn't just tell me this four years ago?"

"Cause it wouldn't have," Atton muttered over his shoulder, rolling his eyes. "You know, helped us out or anything to talk to Revan herself."

"How do we know you're not making this story up too, Admiral?" Sarii added, despite the fact that truth was practically stamped on all of his words.

Onasi glared at her. "Oh no, don't even try and pull the wounded trust act on _me_, sister. I did what I had to do. I didn't know you beyond your service records, and I certainly didn't know anyone else traveling with you."

Sarii wondered if it was just her imagination that he seemed to eye Atton in particular as he said this.

"I don't care if you were the last Jedi in the galaxy or the greatest Jedi Master that ever lived. I'm not going to do anything to endanger my wife or my children-"

_His _wife?

"If that involved lying to you, then so be it. You might have helped save Telos, but as I know from experience even the best Jedi can turn easily."

He paused, staring Sarii directly in the eye.

"I'm sure you know that by now too."

The Admiral sat back up in his chair, reaching for his hat and running his fingers over the edges of it.

"She doesn't have anything to do with what I'm proposing for you and your crew."

Sarii's head was spinning. His pause felt misplaced; she felt like it should have gone after the 'I'm sure you know that', not before-

"I've been given clearance for this mission if and only if I send information back to the Republic every step of the way about our progress in learning more about these new Sith; their capabilities, their resources, everything."

Onasi sighed, vague guilt coming off of him like a heavy fog.

"But my first priority is her. Finding her and bringing her back. Everything else takes a backseat."

He put his hat back on, looking up at her again.

"I need you and your crew to accompany us to the Unknown Regions and from there split up. I need you to investigate the Sith and notify the Republic of what you find. While you're doing that, I'll be the one looking for her."

Sarii watched him stand up from the table, his stance familiar- she had seen in a hundred of her superiors and underlings, had even perfected it herself.

_Feet only slightly apart, hands clasped quietly behind your back, standing straight, shoulders squared, head level, makes you look confident. Inspires people who put store in your decisions, not in the lightsaber that hangs from your belt._

"I wouldn't ask you to follow her. I wouldn't ask that of anyone. I'm going to find her, and I'm going to bring her back to the people that need her. Now will you help me, or not?"

She felt herself begin to dumbly repeat his question, but stopped herself with only the 'n' having pushed itself between her tongue and upper teeth.

_I'm crazy, I'm crazy and stupid for what I'm about to agree to, I'm about to join a trip that's going to bring her back from the dead and put her in front of me in all her smug flesh and blood glory-_

"When do we leave?" Sarii finally answered, somehow keeping herself from scowling as she sensed the Admiral's obvious relief at her reply.

"The coordinates and most up-to-date maps we have will be sent to the _Hawk_. Leave as soon as you're prepared. I have a brief stop on Coruscant and I'll catch up with you from there."

Onasi turned and exited the room with much less of a presence than he had entered it, obviously too distracted by his plans of chasing down Revan and whatever he had to do on Coruscant.

There was a long, awkward silence in which the only noises Sarii could hear was everyone distinctive breathing. Mical's, calm and even; Mira's short bursts of incredulity; Atton's, loud and forced through his nose.

She couldn't hear her own until she realized she was holding her breath, and Sarii finally let out a loud, exasperated sigh.

"Well, we've been hosed," Mira finally said, lifting her leg over the back of the chair and folding her arms.

"Hosed?"

"You know, taken," the bounty hunter snapped. "Tricked, conned, played, duped…we've been had."

_Used, manipulated…_

"He was one of my contacts during my time as an agent for the Republic," Mical said, almost to himself. "His son is becoming more and more well-known within the halls of the Jedi-"

_Succumbing to the deceit of others doesn't make us weak, Mical, _Sarii reassured him._ It only makes those who resorted to trickery the weaker ones._

Master Kavar's usually quiet chuckle echoed loudly against her skull.

_And where does your growing rage against those who deceived you come in, Padawan Zhen?_

"This is going to be a long trip," Sarii finally said, standing up and walking around to the front of the room. "And it'll probably be of the more dangerous variety."

She sighed impatiently under their skeptical looks.

"What I mean is that if you were looking to go off on your own, now would be the perfect time."

"What, you mean worse than having three Sith Lords on our tail and every assassin in the galaxy popping up around every corner?" Mira said, one hand on her hip.

"You need someone around who's quickly learning how to keep that ship in one piece. I bet there'll be ample opportunity for Rand over there to smash it into something or other, and with Bao-Dur…"

_Dead._

_She would have known it even if he hadn't been pinned under half the bulkheads he had spent months repairing, even if one of the horns attached to his Zabrak skull wasn't half ripped off along with parts of his scalp._

_She would have known because she could no longer feel his presence, like hers because it had seen the same things but stronger because they hadn't taken away his love of fixing things, his honest replies and his always ready "Yes, General?"._

_Sarii tried to look for a blanket or something to cover him with, wondered if she could drag him out onto the cold surface of Malachor Five by herself or if a makeshift burial would have to wait until her crewmates came out of unconsciousness. _

_All of it would have to wait until she defeated whatever was waiting for her out there. _

Sarii sighed.

"Yeah, well my idea of a noble mission isn't to go into uncharted space on some old man's orders who's too busy chasing the Sith Lord he's got the hots for to do his own work," Atton muttered.

"Then don't go," she found herself saying. "No one's making you stay."

_But I want him to stay._

Before she could think of some polite way to ask them to leave, Mical and Mira were already out the door, which hissed shut quietly behind them.

Her Padawan lingered briefly in her mind but gave up after a moment or so. Atton was hard to read; her feelings about him were even harder.

"Well...just leaving you like this would be pretty harsh," The pilot said, obviously trying to back-pedal. "You know, about to go running off to your death and everything."

"_You must go where Revan did, into the Unknown Regions, where the Sith, the true Sith, wait in the dark for the great war that comes."_

_Must I? _Must _I?_

"I mean, I'm not doing anything." His sudden casual attitude was so different from his ten-second rant a moment ago that Sarii just stared at him.

"Hey, you could always use company beyond your Padawan there and Mira, who's, well, charming and all, but-"

Atton came closer to her, a couple inches taller and a nervous smile.

"Besides, if I'm not around to bail you out of trouble, who knows what could happen?"

She liked having him around. That was the extent of what she knew about herself and Atton Rand.

Sarii folded her arms in front of her.

"Who knows? So I guess you're coming, then."

"I guess so. For the record, though, I just want to say that I have a bad feeling about this."

She rolled her eyes as they turned and exited the waiting room, heading towards the docks.

"I mean, because last time, we were heading toward this mining colony on the edge of space, and there was this Sith Lord, and..."


	5. Chapter 4

"What's that?"

"Um…the Coruscant Xenozoology Museum."

Carth actually had no way of knowing exactly what the immense building housed; and for all he knew, it very well could have been the Coruscant Xenozoology Museum.

In any case, it satisfied Celyn, who nodded sagely like she understood what 'xenozoology' was. He wasn't even sure he did.

He gripped her small hand, and she reluctantly held on as she had been doing since they stepped off the _Chaser, _tugging on him every five meters in the direction of something she wanted to see.

"Can't we go see the rest of the planet?" she said, dragging her heels and watching a bunch of speeders zip over their heads.

"Not now, Jawa. Later. When you're older."

_For all the times I've promised her that I'm going to practically have to give her a galactic tour, _Carth thought ruefully.

On any other day it would have been fun to take his tenacious little girl around someplace as huge and bright as Coruscant; watch her explore everything and answer her millions of questions.

"How about you pay attention to that building, Celyn," Dustil added, pointing towards the spires of the Jedi Temple. "That's the only one we're going to."

On any other day except today, when they were on their way to a meeting with the Jedi Council.

Carth let Dustil lead the way; he'd only been to the Jedi Temple maybe once or twice before.

"This is where all the Jedi live?" Celyn whispered, suddenly hushed by the gigantic pillars and loud tapping that their feet were making against the marble floors.

"It's their school, and sometimes where they work," he answered. "And right now we're on our way to talk to Dustil's bosses."

Dustil snorted over his shoulder.

_That's my son, effortlessly navigating the halls of the Jedi Temple._

When he thought back, he couldn't remember Dustil ever showing signs of having the Force when he was young. Or maybe he had and they had just never noticed or known what to look for. Watching him now Carth couldn't imagine him carrying any other tool besides the lightsaber at his side, wearing any other uniform besides the muted Jedi robes-

No, there was one other uniform he'd looked completely comfortable in. But that was a memory he'd rather not think about.

They paused outside the Council chambers while Dustil talked briefly with one of its guards. Carth sat down off to the side with Celyn, trying not to look as out of place as he felt.

His daughter squirmed free from the grip he'd had on her hand, taking one or two cautionary steps away from him to stare at the beat-up but still impressive fountain in the middle of the room.

"Are we going on a trip?" she suddenly said, turning back around.

"This is it, Celyn," Carth replied, giving her a smile.

"No," Celyn said impatiently, elongating the 'o'. "Dustil keeps talking about going somewhere in his head. He thinks I can't hear him. Where are we going?"

"We're not going anywhere, Jawa."

It was an entirely new experience being the parent of a kid who could sense when you were lying. You had to think of ways to get around it.

'We're not going anywhere' wasn't a lie. 'We're' included Celyn, and Celyn was most definitely not going anywhere beyond the walls of this building.

"Go on in, Father," Dustil murmured, walking over to join them.

He took a deep breath before rising and entering the Council chambers.

Looking around the room at the varying sizes, shapes, and colors of the members of the Council, Carth couldn't understand what made him so nervous being in front of them. A couple humans who didn't look too much older than him (That was getting a little disturbing. Even the few times he had been in front of the Jedi Council, each time he seemed to be closer to them in age); a Twi'lek and a Zabrak. All of them wore the same non-descript robes; all of them sat in a quiet circle as if they had been waiting there their entire lives for him to walk in.

_Because of what they can do…because if they wanted to, they could erase every memory I ever had and turn me into someone else too. Because they have powers I don't understand, and at any moment they could turn around and use them the wrong way._

Or maybe it was just their impassive gazes and unfathomable sets of eyes watching his every move with more scrutiny than they usually did. It obviously wasn't every day that a Republic Admiral requested a meeting with them.

"Admiral Onasi."

Carth nodded.

"Members of the Council."

He had no idea what the name of the female Zabrak who had murmured his in greeting was. For that matter, neither did he know the names of most of the people in the room; barring Jolee, who sat in the corner with his arms folded and an eyebrow raised.

The old man's hair- what little he had left- was now completely white. It stood out in stark contrast to his skin, wrinkled enough for Carth to know that he wasn't as active a Jedi as he used to be.

"The Council has expected to see you before us for some time," said the Twi'lek, a darker shade of pink. Carth was pretty sure his name was Anik. Or Ahniuk. Or something like that.

"Jedi Dustil Onasi has been a frequent visitor to these halls, in part for the continuing restoration of the new academy on Telos-"

"-But the Council's pretty sure you're here much for the same reason your son often is," Jolee added with a wry smile. "The kid's always badgering us to death with questions after his master, Jedi Revan."

The Twi'lek frowned severely at him. "Or, as she is known in other parts of the galaxy, Jedi Katrina Onasi."

Carth tried not to squirm under his gaze and that of the rest of the Jedi Masters, feeling very much like the irresponsible teenager who had knocked up his girlfriend and was now facing the wrath of her parents.

"So you finally made an honest woman out of her, eh?" Jolee spoke up conversationally. "Bout time. I was beginning to wonder how old you were going to let Celyn get-"

"The Council regrets to inform you, Admiral, that we have no information on the whereabouts or fate of Revan," Ahniuk murmured with what sounded like honest regret.

"I'm not here to ask about what happened to her, Master Jedi. I'm going to find out for myself."

It was unsettling when the Council didn't explode into murmuring and discussion like he expected them to. Instead there was complete silence as they all stared back at him.

"Indeed," the Twi'lek finally said. His headtails, which were draped behind him, rose up with his brow as he furrowed it in Carth's direction.

"I'm taking a team of Jedi with me, including my son," Carth added quickly. "We're investigating the threat for the Republic as well as working on finding out what happened to her."

"Admiral, perhaps you do not realize the severity of the situation," the female Zabrak who had greeted him began. "You are headed into uncharted and unknown territory. Your Republic will not exist in the space you are planning on entering. This is unlike any kind of threat that has been battled before-"

"The Sith in the Unknown Regions are believed to be the closest living descendents of true Sith, and their power in the dark side is beyond our comprehension-" one of the human members of the Council continued- another middle aged man whose receding red hairline had seen better days.

"Dustil's fought their methods," Carth interrupted. "So have the rest of the Jedi who are going with me-"

"Be sure you know what you're getting yourself into, kid," Jolee murmured. "These aren't your garden variety assassins or men in white armor."

"Jedi Dustil is headstrong and reckless," Ahniuk said firmly. "Much like his former master, and now, it appears, his father."

Carth frowned, trying to ignore the fatherly instinct to give the Twi'lek a good shove over saying something derogatory about Dustil.

"This isn't up for debate, Master Jedi. I'm going with or without your approval."

He took another deep breath.

"I'm here to ask a favor from the Council."

He waited for some kind of reaction beyond the way that the members of the Council shifted their weight in their seats and rested their hands on their armrests or heads. When he saw that nothing more was coming, he went on.

"Revan-" _Is it going to hurt now whenever I say her name too? _

"Revan and I have a daughter, Celyn. She's five years old. With both me and Dustil going on this mission, there's no one to look after her."

He paused for a minute, wondering if even from where she was out in the hall Celyn could sense what he was saying, know that he was going to leave her.

"I'm here to ask if she can be left in the care of the Jedi."

"Admiral Onasi, the Jedi Order is not a babysitting service," Ahniuk snapped.

Carth was too irritated now to mind their stares, and he continued without any hesitation.

"I understand that, Master Jedi. I was pretty sure that they don't turn away people seeking shelter and help either."

There was a flurry of noises this time, from the sound of Ahniuk's headtail sliding over the fabric of his robes to the slight tinkling of the female Zabrak's purple jewelry; the tapping of the middle aged human's boots against the floor, and finally the way Jolee quietly cleared his throat.

"Young Celyn is welcome, Admiral," the Zabrak Jedi Master finally replied.

"She can stay with the rest of the youngest apprentices," Jolee added. "Should fit right in. I could sense the Force coming off that kid a kilometer away."

"Is she to be included in the training?"

Carth's head shot up. "What?"

Ahniuk sighed impatiently. "Your daughter is strong in the Force. That is apparent even through these stone walls. Do you wish her to begin Jedi training?"

_Jedi training? She's fracking five years old…_

"Admiral?"

Carth rubbed his neck nervously. He shot a desperate glance to Jolee, who shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

_Where's Dustil when you need him… I don't know anything about this stuff. Did she want Celyn to be a Jedi? I sure as hell don't-_

"Um…no. No, don't train her yet. Just…watch her."

The members of the Council nodded towards him, and Carth turned to make a hasty retreat from the chambers.

Dustil was waiting for him near the door.

"Geeze, you were just running the gamut in there, weren't you? Nervousness, anger, irritation, impatience," his son said, counting off on his fingers. "You're on a quick trip to the dark side there, Father-"

"Isn't there anywhere else we can leave her, Dustil?" Carth murmured, glancing over Dustil's shoulder to where Celyn sat on the bench, kicking the base with her heels and watching them cautiously.

"Nope. This is the best we have."

"Wouldn't it be better to leave her with someone she knows? What about Tova?"

Dustil shook his head.

"You don't want to do that, Father. It would be a…bad idea."

"Why?"

"Celyn'll slip and call her Revan."

He raised an eyebrow, trying to catch Dustil's gaze even as his son fidgeted and looked away.

"I thought you two worked all that out."

"Well, yeah. Kind of."

Carth didn't need to be Force sensitive to know that that was a load of bantha crap.

"Look, Tova's not going to ask about it anymore," Dustil finally said in a low voice. "But if that information just falls into her lap, there's no way she's not going to make it public."

Carth nodded, sighing heavily.

"The _Chaser_'s stocked and everything?"

"As ready as she'll ever be. Aptly named, too."

"Good. We'll leave in the morning. We're already behind as it is."

"I'm going to go take care of some things, then."

"I still don't think you should come, Dustil."

_You've got a fiancée, an academy under construction, you're a man now-  
__You're my son and I don't want to watch you use that lightsaber to keep yourself from dying-_

"I'm still going to, Father."

He watched Dustil head over to where Celyn was still sitting. Their lips didn't move and Celyn seemed to frown at him, but still nodded. Dustil hugged her and then headed back out towards the exit of the Jedi Temple.

Carth rejoined his daughter, reaching out for her hand. "What'd he say?"

Celyn's little face was scrunched up in concentration, and she finally sighed in frustration.

"He said don't be mad at you, but I don't know why, because I'm not mad at you."

_You're not mad at me _yet_, Jawa, _he thought sadly.

The red, golds, and brilliant pinks that usually made up the Coruscanti sunset were now covered by thick gray stormclouds that got darker with each passing minute. Low rumbling echoed through the halls of the Jedi Temple. It would be a rainy night.

_She left in the morning. With what would have been the sunrise if we weren't on the Citadel where there isn't any sun._

The halls of the Jedi weren't terribly bustling, but still Carth led his daughter down a few halls until he finally found an empty room.

"Jawa," he murmured, sitting down at the edge of another fountain- did this place ever run out of them?- "I have to talk to you about something."

_He'd followed her silently through the various modules; on the shuttle to the docks, at her heels right up until here, as she tossed the last crate of cargo onto her ship._

_It was a small freighter, nowhere as sleek as the _Ebon Hawk _or streamlined as the _Jedi Chaser_, but he had made damn sure when he had helped her find it and prepare it that it was one of the fastest things this side of the Outer Rim, and had almost as many defenses as the _Sojourn.

_Katrina turned, wiping her hands against her nondescript civilian clothing, brushing her dark brown braid of hair over her shoulder._

_She smiled softly at him._

_"You didn't come to see me off just to give me the silent treatment now that you're here, did you?"_

Celyn was distracted for a minute by the room and its many plants and hanging pictures, but at the tone of his voice she looked up at him.

"It's pretty here," she tried to offer helpfully.

In the process of getting permission and help and securing all the necessary goods and services for this trip, Carth had somehow thought that this moment would have been a lot farther away. But here it was, staring him in the face with his own brown eyes and her slightly curly brown hair.

_She'd already said goodbye to Celyn the night before as they sat in their apartment, the little girl fast asleep in her arms after bawling louder than an upset herd of kinrath. (He'd never been more grateful for Jedi calming techniques)._

_"My poor sleepy girl," she murmured, gently working her fingers through the ever-present tangles in their daughter's hair. Celyn only snored._

_He felt inexplicably angry at her. Because in the morning, when Celyn woke up and she was gone, she wouldn't be here for the tears and the screaming and the nightmares that he would have to deal with, half of which he had no way of comforting because they came through the Force._

I'm sorry, Morgana, _he thought again, hating himself for the thousandth time. He'd left Dustil pretty much the same way._

I had a war to fight. She's creating this war for herself, _he protested stubbornly._

_Poor sleepy girl, indeed. The day the kid had been told her entire short life would happen someday, the day she dreaded, was going to come tomorrow._

"Next time I'll show you everything on this planet, Celyn. We can go see all those buildings you asked me about, and I'll tell you all about how this place got so big."

He was stalling, and both he and his little girl knew it.

"Why aren't we seeing them now? Why are we here?" she asked.

Carth brushed her hair back behind her ears roughly.

"Because you have to stay here for a while, Jawa."

_Carth grasped one of her wrists and she fell neatly into his arms. He held her as her head rested on his shoulder. She started to pull away and he found his hands involuntarily gripping her hips, holding her in place._

_"I have to go now," she said flatly._

_"You don't have to go. You don't have to do anything," He found himself saying, even though he had resolved not to torture her anymore, to let her do this thing she felt she needed to do, to let her find her own closure and accept that he could not protect her from everything._

_"Not now," Katrina said, shaking her head. "Please, not now, Carth, it's too late-"_

_"I love you. And I'll love you even if you don't go fix something you did as a Sith. And so will Celyn, and Dustil- well, he'll respect the hell out of you regardless. Maybe he understands this better than I do because he was…maybe there are things he thinks he has to make up for too. But not like this, Revan. Even if it's for the things you helped to do to Telos and Morgana and Dustil and me-"_

_He saw the dark red blush of shame that had risen in her cheeks. She hung her head._

_"Stop that," Carth's voice shook and he tried in vain to get it back to its normal level. "It's in the past, Revan. Going out there by yourself isn't going to change it and there's nothing I can do to change it either."_

Celyn's face betrayed the first signs of panic but she recovered quickly. Not without moving closer to him, however.

"Why? Are we all staying here?"

"No, just you. I have to go."

He watched as her lower lip began to tremble, small whimpers coming out of her open mouth.

"Why does everybody have to _leave_?" she suddenly wailed, and her voice echoed off the walls of the room they were in as she folded her arms in front of her and glared at him.

"This-this is dumb," she stammered. "You're being stupid and sad…just like M-mommy…"

He knew that tone, and it came right before the shrieking and the angry little fists.

"Celyn," he said sharply. "She loves you. And I love you-"

"Then why are you all _leaving_?" his daughter yelled again at the top of her lungs, her face beet red.

"Celyn _Onasi_."

He didn't know why he had expected that to work, especially when he had meant only to sound a little bit harsher but ended up barking it like she was a new recruit.

Celyn burst into tears.

Carth opened his arms for her but his daughter didn't move from where she was standing rigid and stubborn a few centimeters away.

"Jawa, I wouldn't leave you unless I had a very good reason," he tried again softly. "I'm going to go find Mommy."

_"Carth-" she tried to say, breaking off and putting a hand up to her mouth to cover a sob._

_"It used to be this easy, Carth," she said, gazing up at him. "It used to be that all I needed was you to make everything go away. But it-"_

_Katrina's breath caught in her throat, and she gripped his sleeves._

_But it didn't work anymore. He couldn't grasp why it no longer worked; why his arms around her didn't make her forget everything and smile again. It still did for him._

Celyn drew in a sharp breath, tears still rolling down the sides of her face.

"I want to help find Mommy."

She didn't sound entirely enthusiastic as she said it, probably because she knew what his answer would be.

"No, Celyn. It's very dangerous. It's a job for grown-ups and Jedi."

"I have the Force too," she added. "Dustil said so-"

_Damn it, Dustil…_

"Yes, that's right, you do have the Force. But it's not going to do any good now. You can go on trips like this later, when you're older-"

_Over my dead body, _he thought to himself.

Celyn watched him for another moment quietly.

"Is…is Dustil going to stay here with me?"

"No. Dustil's coming to help me."

_For a moment he was ready with the rest of his planned argument; use Celyn as bait, remind her of every good deed she had done since Taris- hell, drug her and carry her off if he had to._

_But instead Carth forced himself to loosen his grip on her waist, and he felt her breathe evenly. The marks of his tightly clenched fingers were still barely visible in the folds of her clothing._

_"You'd better go then, gorgeous. Before I start getting ideas about hog-tying you and dragging you back into the station."_

_She smirked, carefully wiping her face, taking a few deep breaths._

_"Tell Celyn I love her."_

_"You can tell her yourself. When you come back." Katrina looked up at him._

Celyn threw her arms around his neck, sobbing into his chest, and he could feel a wet spot spreading over his shoulder where her face was buried, her little hands gripping and twisting the fabric of his shirt.

_I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Jawa._

"Celyn…Celyn, sweetheart, listen to me." She glanced up at him, her eyes wide and her hair frizzy from all her shaking.

"I'm going to come back, Jawa. I _promise_ you I'm coming back. All right?"

She sniffled loudly, and he reached to smooth back her hair and wipe the tears from where they were dripping down her chin.

_Like Dustil's chin. Did he ever cry?_

"Promise?" she mumbled hopefully.

"Jawa, I not only promise I'm coming back, but I promise to bring Mommy back with me."

_She still hadn't promised him. He doubted in these last few moments that that was going to change. It didn't stop Carth from trying anyways. _

_Katrina kissed his cheek and began to pull away. He grasped her hand._

_"I love you, Carth," she said._

_"I love you, beautiful."_

_Katrina nodded resolutely._

_Her hand slipped from his, and he put them into his pockets, watching her as she boarded the ship; watching her as she entered the cockpit, sat in the pilot's seat. Watching her as she powered up her freighter, began backing it out of the dock._

A little shallow in her movements_, he noticed idly. _She never was the greatest pilot.

_He watched her until the ship was well into space; until it could no longer be distinguished from the rest of the stars and small moving spacecraft in the sky._

_And then Carth Onasi let out a gruff sigh._

His daughter bit her lower lip almost shyly, her eyes still wide but this time from excitement rather than terror.

_You're a soldier. You have no idea if you're coming back or not. You shouldn't make promises you can't keep, she'll hate you forever if you can't live up to it-_

The possibility of failure had never occurred to him. He'd hate himself forever if he couldn't do exactly what he had promised to do.

Carth chose to ignore that and instead kissed the top of his daughter's head.

* * *

He leaned over her, watching the shadow of the rain outside patter across her skin, the cool air from the ventilation system softly moving her blonde curls.

"Wake up, Miss Vin," he murmured against her cheek.

"Mmm. I think I like where I am just fine," his fiancée whispered dreamily, turning her head slightly to face him.

Her long eyelashes fluttered open and he was reminded for the umpteenth time how much he loved her.

Dustil considered scrapping the whole thing, letting his father go alone like he had wanted-

"You're shaking," Tova murmured, grasping his hand from where it was buried in her hair.

"I have to go, Tova," Dustil began slowly, carefully running his finger across her smooth cheek. His own skin felt like beat leather compared to hers.

Her eyes grew more alert, though the lids didn't completely rise.

"Go? Now? We just…I mean, you just tricked me into marrying you, Jedi. And now you're going to leave?"

Dustil smirked, his other hand resting on her waist. "I have to go help her."

That calculating investigator look was in her eyes again. "Help who?"

"Katrina," he murmured, though it still came out awkwardly. 'Revan' was oddly so much easier than 'Katrina Onasi'. "My master. Her messages stopped coming. Whatever's out there, she's found it. My father's going after her. I can't let him go alone, not when there's no telling what we might be up against."

_There's telling. There's Revan slicing you up the middle, Mother…and Father, Tova dying. There's the lies of the dark side just waiting for you and Father._

Tova sighed sadly, gripping his shoulders like she wanted to hold him in that spot forever.

"Dustil-" she began, breaking off.

He leaned into the shadows dancing across her face and kissed her.

"Come back. Please come back," she said, in a tone you would never hear Tova Vin use on the air or in public.

"You think I went through all the trouble of getting you to marry me just to run off and never go through with it?" Dustil replied, smiling.

"This is what it'll be like, isn't it?" Tova murmured, and he could feel her fingers grasping his clothing, running down his spine. "When we're married, I mean."

He nodded.

"You're not thinking of saying 'no' again, are you? I don't think my poor Telosian heart can take that."

But even he had to admit that both times she had said 'no' had been for good reasons. The first had been somewhat mutual:

_"You're not doing a story on her. End of story."_

_"Why are you getting so upset about this?" Tova snapped, exasperated. "It would be tasteful. I bet she would agree to it. It won't hurt anyone. It'll help your father's reputation to dispel all the rumors about her."_

Not when you get to the climax of your questioning and ask 'are you Revan', _Dustil thought, frowning. _Not when she answers you, and you run the interview and hundreds of worlds start extraditing her for war crimes and Celyn loses her mom like I lost mine and Father gets a dishonorable discharge from the fleet for harboring an enemy of the state.

_"I'm not going to say it again, Tova. Get the idea out of your head right now."_

_"Or else what? I don't think I like being ordered around for the rest of my life."_

_"Then maybe you should think about who this is going to affect. You know, _besides_ you and your ratings."_

_Tova yanked furiously on her left hand, pulling the ring off and hurling it towards him. He barely caught it, juggling it a few times before getting a grip._

_"How am I supposed to know how it's going to affect anyone when you don't tell me the truth, Dustil? Not about the past, not about your family… not even about yourself."_

Tova rolled her eyes at him.

"How could I when you're defying the entire Jedi Order for me? That'd be pretty ungrateful, even if there aren't that many of them left."

The second reason had been justified too, even though there was no way of getting around it:

_She was crying, just like she had been in his torture session on Chael. Dustil squeezed her hand, wishing he could sit up in his infirmary bed and hold her or give her something more comforting than just his cold grip._

_"I'll be all right, Tova," he wheezed, grimacing under the hands of the medical droid next to him._

_"I thought you were dead," she murmured, trying to wipe away her tears._

_He'd been on a solo mission again, caught in the fiery destruction of a renegade pair of assassin droids. A rumor had leaked out about his demise, making headline news on Coruscant. Luckily he had been found and taken to a medical facility before the rumor had reached Telos._

_"I'm not. I'll be okay in a day or so." _

_He saw her eyes going over his battered chest, bruised from all his broken ribs and marked with scars from lightning or lightsabers or both._

_"Dustil…" Tova breathed for a few minutes, composing herself and turning to him again._

_"Your life is always going to be like this. The life of a Jedi." He nodded._

_"I don't want that life, Dustil," she added softly. "I don't want to grow grey hairs worrying about you every day. I don't want to share this with you."_

_Her hand slipped from his, and in its place was her ring._

"Good, because I have no intention of dying out there and you'd better be the first thing I see when I get back."

She smirked, her eyelids wavering tiredly.

"Maybe you've forgotten the title of a certain regular HoloNet news segment, _This Just In with Tova Vin. _I'll be the first on the scene."

"I said you, not you and your entourage," Dustil muttered, settling into the pillow next to her.

"Mmm," Tova closed her eyes, almost back to sleep. "Entourage comes with me…we're kind of a package deal, Master Jedi. Just like you."

_Except my package comes with both the dark side and the Jedi Order, a high ranking Admiral of the Fleet, and a former Sith Lord._


	6. Chapter 5

She clung to the last of the Padawans as they exited the quickly darkening room.

It was not the darkness that made her wrap herself up in the teen's glowing Force aura like a warm blanket, nor was it the fact that, technically, she had never seen a blanket or anything that didn't resemble the cloak of dark blue that was fast descending on Coruscant's skyline.

The Padawan was unaware of her reaching inside him, lingering in his heart and mind for one guilty moment before furtively returning to her own and allowing him to disappear down the halls of the Jedi Temple.

Visas Marr sat in silence on the floor of the meditation chamber, listening to the sounds of her own breathing echoing off the slick floors and the fabric of her veil rustling under the slight breeze.

At first, the Jedi Temple had overwhelmed her- literally.

She had fainted upon the _Ebon Hawk_'s arrival nearly four years ago. The presence of billions of lifeforms and sentients going about their daily lives on the enormous planet alone was enough to give any Force-user an overload. To a Miraluka who breathed and lived and spoke and-

"_To see everything around you extinguished; it was as if I was…blinded. It was as if the Force had been bled from the world."_

And _saw_ through the Force…walking into the Jedi Temple for the first time, full of the most powerful and hardy of Force-users throughout the galaxy (they had to be; they had survived the purges, hadn't they?) was akin to the sudden shrieking of mynocks in her ears.

_So loud…so bright, after so many years in the silence and the shadows._

The Miraluka gently rose from the floor, putting a hand to her mouth to cover a yawn.

The Jedi, she had found, were true to their reputations. She had been welcomed into the Order; indeed, embraced because of the lessons the Masters felt she could teach.

_And teach them I have. Once every week to the older apprentices and younger Padawans._

A day would come when she would use the short yellow lightsabers that hung from her sides again, but for now she was content to stay here.

The Exile- Sarii, as she insisted on being called- had asked if she wanted to accompany them on their latest mission into those places she had thought of as being only nightmares, the places she had thought Nihilus had invented to frighten her, to make her turn.

Not that it had taken much.

_She snuggled against the bodies- _how can the dead be so warm? –_and wished desperately for a weapon._

_She had searched for hours among the corpses; but none of the bodies around her- friends, relatives, neighbors- had even a common blaster among them. __Besides, Katarr- _dead, dead now like everything else –_was a peaceful planet._

_Visas grasped the hair of the still woman in front of her, wiping her bloodied hands in it, hoping that something else would strike the planet first, another attack. She imagined starvation would be slow, and painful-_

More painful than this?

_Silently the Miraluka had resigned herself to death, a death of any kind preferable to _this. _To nothing but crude matter, flesh, rock, emptiness now. _

_To Katarr._

Visas had no desire to enter those places, the Unknown Regions; to confront things more terrible than her former master, to _see_ the faces of those who had helped destroy her world.

The new Sith threat was the talk of the Temple now. The masters would discuss amongst themselves, lowering their voices or pausing whenever the younger ones would pass by. The Jedi Council made no official announcement or statement, ignoring both the rumors that ran through the Order and the ones looking to be verified by the HoloNet reporters that stood watch by the doors of the Temple every day.

Visas continued down the halls and up the grand staircases, towards the dormitories and private rooms, towards her bed.

For as much good as it did them to try and hide it. The mission that the Exile had been sent on was known to everyone. To find Revan, to discover what terrible fate might be waiting to crush the Jedi next. She heard the Padawans discussing it before and after their meditations, some of the cockier ones making jokes about taking bets on its success.

The Miraluka entered her own room, standing in the doorway for a moment or so.

Sight through the Force, if it could be called sight, was more feelings and colors, shapes and sounds. There was no radiation from the sparse surroundings of the Jedi dormitories; the pale white walls or the beds, the occasional rug or computer console. She only knew the identities of these objects through years of life experience.

Anything living, however, shone to her brighter than the stars that now veiled the Coruscanti sky.

"Is someone here?" Visas called, although she knew someone definitely was.

It was a small bundle of energy, huddled tightly under the workbench.

"I'm sorry," she heard a voice sigh, resolute and high in pitch. The small being crawled out, gazing up at her.

"A child," Visas realized. Such a glow; bright ivory and overpowering in its intensity, was only evident around the very youngest of the Padawans: blank white slates that had yet to be colored blue or red by the Force.

"Why do you hide in here?" she murmured, watching the glowing figure stand up cautiously.

"They're mad at me."

The child, a little girl, pulsed with indignancy and wounded pride.

"Who?"

"The other kids."

This one wasn't like the other little ones Visas could sense- running through the halls, laughing, indulged by the masters because they would be the future of the rebuilding Order.

The Force was strong with the child, but it flowed freely. Unchecked, unbalanced, and probably unrealized.

"Why are the other children upset with you?" Visas murmured.

The child's image of herself began to reach the Miraluka; slightly curly brown hair and brown eyes.

"They said they wanted their practice remotes to be harder. So I fixed them, but now they're too hard, and they're all mad at me."

It all came out in one harried breath, and the child's aura dimmed a little, offset by sadness.

"I don't like it here," she added. "I want to go home. I want Mommy to come back."

The child's thoughts of her mother pulsated with greediness, as though she was hoarding them and did not want to share despite the fact that Visas knew she could not have consciously been blocking her.

"What happened to your mother?"

"She went to stop Sith. Father and Dustil went to find her."

The images of Dustil and Father were not guarded, however, and Visas could clearly see two men, one older and one a younger version of the other. The younger was clad in Jedi robes and familiar to Visas for more than one reason.

"Do you mean Dustil Onasi? Revan's Padawan?"

"What's a Padawan?" the little girl asked, sounding out the word.

"A Padawan is a student of the Force. They usually have a master, a teacher."

The child nodded.

"Mommy says she's not Dustil's mother, even though he's my brother. Just his teacher."

"You're Admiral Onasi's daughter," Visas realized. The child perked up at the mention of her father.

"Do you know Father?"

"No. Only that he left you in the care of the Jedi while he tries to find Revan."

Revan's name meant little to her in the sense that it did the rest of the galaxy. A woman with a fleet and a technological factory who tried and failed to take over the Republic? It could not compare with what Visas knew the Sith were capable of, the things she had seen her former master do.

The child frowned, narrowing her eyes at Visas and folding her arms, clearly imitating someone's position she had seen before.

"No one's supposed to know that's Mommy's name."

The little girl was making such an effort to look threatening that Visas couldn't help laughing softly.

"There is nothing to fear from me, Celyn. I am a Jedi."

The child's name, Celyn Onasi, was easy to sense. And also the word 'Jawa' floating around with it. Visas wondered if it was merely part of the disorganized mind of a child.

"Come. We should return you to where you belong-"

"No," Celyn said sharply. "I don't want to go back."

"Certainly the other children haven't been cruel to you. Such pettiness is not encouraged among the Jedi."

Celyn wrinkled up her nose for a moment, and Visas could sense her tight anger at not understanding half of what the Miraluka had said.

"They keep trying to…" The little girl trailed off, frustrated.

"To what?"

"To see what I think. They want to see Mommy, and Father, and Dustil, and sometimes I can stop them, but now I can't. And I can't do the same thing to them."

_Force connection and mind-reading techniques, _Visas thought. The child was not in training; and whatever her connection to the Force, it had never been developed enough to allow her to shut others out. She was capable…Visas's attempt to see Revan in her mind had been proof.

"Would you like to learn how?" Celyn nodded enthusiastically.

_And then, perhaps, I can get some sleep, _Visas thought, kneeling on the floor. The child followed her movements, watching her closely.

"Think of your mother," she murmured. Celyn scrunched her eyes shut, and the strength of them was suddenly overwhelming; pulsating with the little girl's love, longing, and slight resentment.

Visas almost winced, but she centered herself and tentatively reached for a more concrete thought.

The little girl instantly recoiled, but her efforts were wild and uncontrolled. Visas caught many different images of Revan; mostly laughing and smiling, occasionally with the Admiral or her Padawan.

They were both handsome men, and Visas finally understood why a couple of the female Padawans not been entirely open during meditations after their departure.

She shook her head.

"It didn't work, did it?"

"No," Celyn replied moodily, sitting back on her heels and sighing.

"Instead of trying to shield the thoughts of your mother from me, you only used all of your strength to keep my consciousness-"

"You're hard to listen to," the little girl interrupted sharply. "You use too many big words."

Visas frowned.

"Perhaps you should be patient instead of assuming you will not be able to understand."

"Maybe you should stop saying words I don't know," Celyn shot back.

She considered sending the child away to sulk. It had indeed been a long day, and Visas was tired.

But the little girl's feelings of loneliness and solitude were so strong and acute that she didn't think she would be able to block them from her sight now if she tried. They were too powerful.

And all too familiar.

_Visas heard the crunching of the dead leaves before she even sensed him coming towards her. Why should she have felt him? Everything around her was dead; he was barely alive._

_But lying there among the bodies, only able to feel herself-_

I am the only survivor of the decimation of Katarr. It sounds like a news brief from Coruscant, a line out of the history records, _she thought._

_Visas pushed herself up, straining to feel his presence even as she could hear in the distance the sound of a ship's engines slowly burning down, the heavy thump on the dry earth of his feet-_

_And she had been sure that he was a man. That had been apparent from the first moment he had stepped onto Katarr._

_She grasped desperately for him, and she felt herself roughly shoved away-_

_No, not so much shoved. More frozen where she had tried to connect with something alive; however minute, however dark and cold and icy like the bodies and the earth around her._

_Visas shivered, although there was now no breeze on her world, nothing but her and the man now raking over her with his mind. She made no attempt to shut him out._

_Everything else had been severed. She and her agony were all that flickered, and now she struggled for oxygen like the dying flame she was, eager for whatever he could give her._

"When you tried to keep me from seeing your mother," Visas began again slowly. "You pushed me away, correct?"

"Cor-rect," Celyn enunciated in reply.

"Pushing me away won't work, because I can still see you mother. She is still in your mind even as you try to keep me from getting in. To keep others from seeing her, you need to make her disappear rather than trying to overpower me."

"So I need to not think about Mommy."

"Cor-rect," Visas echoed. Celyn nodded, closing her eyes to try again.

The images were back, more timid than before, but no less clear to Visas. She saw Revan, a woman with brown hair and hazel eyes, kissing the little girl's forehead.

Visas attempted to reach further. This time, the images of Revan grew less and less intense, until all the Miraluka could find was a vague feeling of happiness when she searched for the child's feelings.

Celyn exhaled loudly, smiling.

"I did it."

"You did," Visas agreed.

"Can I try one more time?" She closed her eyes without waiting for Visas's response.

The child bore a striking similarity to her mother, except for the eyes and a slight difference in the shape of her chin. Visas idly studied the memories of the little girl before focusing and preparing to grasp for more again.

Something was suddenly shifted, as though a lens were out of alignment and the colors before Visas's eyes were blending and bleeding together.

She could still feel longing and isolation, but their colors were dark and muted, stifled and murky. The pictures slowly came to her and she saw Revan again.

This time, however, neither the child nor any other members of her family were with her. And Revan wore a mask-

The force with which the child closed off her mind was almost physically jarring- almost as much as the sound of the girl's startled whimper.

Visas opened her mouth to breathe, reaching towards the little girl who was now glowing brightly again, her aura quivering with fear.

"That…that was Mommy…" Celyn began slowly, obviously trying to muster up her courage. "But she was different…"

Visas was tempted to force her way into the child's mind, find the connection and see it for what it was. "This was not one of your memories of your mother?"

Celyn shook her head. "I felt like Mommy was talking to me in my head. She does that sometimes," she offered.

_If not memories, then…no. Surely the child could not pick up a feeling across so many parsecs and sectors, _Visas thought, furrowing her brow.

If it was not a memory, however, it was a vision. Or a communication from Revan herself. The Council would certainly be interested if either were the case.

"Clearing your mind and erasing things from your mind can also be useful in trying to concentrate on a single thought," Visas murmured. "We saw only a little of your mother as being…different. We should look more and see what it might mean."

"It means something?" Celyn said.

"It could. It may be that your mother is trying to talk to you. Or it may be that you are seeing what she is doing, wherever she is-"

"Show me," the girl demanded, her fear replaced with determination.

"Think of your mother," Visas repeated.

The child closed her eyes again, bringing up only the same happy memories.

"Think only of the one where she was different."

Vague flashes of the darker image of Revan spotted over the larger memories, but they kept slipping from Visas's sight, as though the little girl was too weak to hold onto them.

"Make every other memory disappear," the Miraluka instructed. "Think only of the different one, nothing else."

The images shifted and the dark blur began to take the others over. It was unclear and Visas could only see shapes, only hear a low murmur.

She reached into the girl's mind. She could feel the child flinch and react involuntarily to the lesson they had just had, trying to shut her out. Visas ignored it and clenched firmly on the vision, helping Celyn to hold onto it and make it clearer.

_It was dark until she lazily lifted her hand from where it rested under the pillow, turning the lighting controls up with a waggle of her finger._

_Katrina breathed slowly against the bed for a few moments._

_"HK?" she finally called out, yawning._

_The droid awoke from his sleeping state, beginning a flurry of mechanical creaking where he stood in the corner of the room._

_"Statement: Ready to serve, Master."_

_"Play it."_

_There was a moment of hesitation as she waited for the droid to finish powering up; as she waited for feeling to come back into her muscles after a long night of deep sleep._

_"Query: Play what, Master?"_

_Katrina rolled her eyes, sitting up in bed, stretching her arms behind her head._

_"You know what I mean, HK."_

_She tossed the blankets back over the pillows haphazardly, crossing to the storage drawers and pulling out her clothing._

_"Notification," HK began exasperatedly. "Master, are you aware that the recorded auditory sample you are requesting was played a standard eight hours ago?"_

_"Right before I went to sleep, yes, HK."_

_The droid sighed heavily._

_"And are you further aware, Master, of the approximate number of times this sample has been replayed?" She ignored him, reaching behind her to braid her hair, her fingers so used to it by now that they almost continued the motions after she had run out of hair around her shoulderblades._

_"Supplementation: Approximately three hundred and seventy three times, Master. Surely by now you have grasped all the possible nuances and subtleties of these seventy-five-point-seven seconds of dialogue-"_

_"HK, shut up and play it again. That's an order, not a request."_

_The droid straightened up, more responsive to her irritation than her persuasion._

_"Compliance: Yes, Master."_

_Katrina lifted her shirt over her head, the cold air of the ship making goosebumps rise up on her stomach._

_"Hey gorgeous." His voice crackled through HK's vocabulator, lined with static but no less adept at making her skin tingle._

_Katrina reached for the dark grey robes, tying them around her waist with her belt. They were long and think, covering her arms and legs and most of her neck._

_"Sweet dreams. I love you."_

_It was intended to be a nighttime message, but that didn't stop her from playing it in the morning, the afternoon, sometimes three times in a row._

_Katrina slipped on the dark black leather boots, buckling them up to her knee, letting her robes brush over them an inch of so above the toes. She reached for the shells of armor lying in the corner- a breastplate and armbands._

_There was a moment of silence on the recording in which she heard Carth laugh softly._

_"Come on, Jawa. Real ones don't talk that well but I know you can."_

_Katrina smiled to herself, feeling the armor click together around her upper torso. She grasped the ocular drops, leaning back and touching them to her eyes._

_"I miss you, Mommy." Her daughter's sullen, reluctant voice finally came, sounding tinny when translated through a droid. "Father misses you too-"_

_She slowly lifted her head, inspecting her appearance in the mirror. Her eyes were an ugly shade of mustard yellow, the pupils a dark maroon like blistering red sores surrounded by pus._

_"None of that, Celyn," Carth's voice murmured sharply. "You're going to make her sad."_

_"Maybe if she's sad she'll come back," Celyn replied unabashedly. She heard Carth sigh in the background, and she fingered the ring on her left hand before slipping on her gloves. They crunched and rumpled as she cracked her knuckles._

_"No, Mommy left _because _she was sad. We need to try and make her happy, Jawa. It's probably very scary where she is."_

_Katrina inhaled slowly, reaching for the nearby needle. She held it up to her neck for a moment before injecting it._

_"I love you, Mommy. Don't be sad or scared."_

_A shudder wracked her body and she carefully put the needle down, gripping the edges of the table. Her body temperature dropped drastically, but the amount of robes and armor she wore compensated. Finally Katrina pushed herself up, looking in the mirror once again._

_"Good girl," she could barely hear Carth murmur, the sounds of Celyn leaving the room. His breathing was calm and even for a few seconds, as though there were hundreds of things he wanted to say and he was trying to decide which were the most important._

_Her skin was now a scaly white, vague tints of grey where there had once been a healthy red glow. Her veins stood out a bright purple, thin and bent like the angles of a spider's web._

_Katrina reached back for the hood of her robe, pulling it over her head._

_Her hands shook slightly at the last part, as they did every morning when she reached the final stage of her transformation. She carefully grasped the black mask between her gloved fingers, holding it up to her face._

_"Go to sleep, beautiful," Carth finally murmured, apparently having decided that there was nothing more important than wishing her peaceful rest._

_She jumped slightly when she heard the smooth click of the mask fitting into place._

_"Safe journey." The recording finally ended._


	7. Chapter 6

"Well, you're not going to believe this."

Sarii opened one eye, the other still tightly squinting in an effort to remain in her position of meditation, floating a few centimeters above the floor in the cargo hold of the _Ebon Hawk_.

Atton leaned up against the doorway, the flaps of his jacket slapping loudly against each other under the air vents. Yet another part of the ship that was falling apart: the grating that usually transferred heavy blowing into gentle air-conditioning was long destroyed and long overdue for replacement.

"Does that actually help?" he murmured, the cockiness in his voice replaced with curiosity.

"Help? Help with what?"

He had that gizka-caught-in-the-crossfire look in his eyes again, the same one she remembered from Peragus when she had found him locked up in the security cage.

"With…whatever it is you're trying to do," he muttered lamely.

Sarii shrugged, clumsily unfolding her legs as she landed back on the ground. She stood up, rubbing her back and listening to it crack as she bent backwards.

"It's better than losing another Pazaak game against you."

_Or trading stories of close scrapes with Mira. Or trying to teach Mical lightsaber techniques in the garage of a small freighter._

Needless to say, they were all going a little stir-crazy.

"Because it never seems to help you win any battles," Atton continued. "Not that we've been losing any…well, not that we've had any at _all_ lately…"

The pilot shook his head in frustration.

"All I heard you, Mical, the Miraluka, and even old Kreia talk about was meditation. It's never helped any of the Jedi I've met before."

_Helped them resist you? Helped them escape you?_

Not being able to read him had its advantages. Sarii thankfully couldn't tell if the images that came to mind were true or not.

Then again, the image was difficult to believe in its own right. It was hard to reconcile a picture of a Sith standing over a tortured Jedi with a cruel smile on his face against a mouthy pilot who had only been completely honest with her once, in a back alley on Nar Shaddaa.

The fact that she knew for a fact that he had once been that Sith made her suspect that there was still more to Atton Rand than met the eye.

_Sometimes the truth is more damaging than the lies, Padawan Sarii._

Besides, she hadn't really been meditating so much as making a long-distance call. A _very _long-distance call.

_She searched her mind and found that she couldn't remember Dantooine without the roaming kinrath herds, without the barely strung-together settlement, without the greasy scavengers around their campfires._

_She couldn't remember the enclave without its walls lying in pieces all over the courtyard, without its once lush and maintained gardens growing like scattered weeds around doorframes and across floors._

_It was understandable, of course. Before the attack, the planet wasn't all that memorable. She'd only been to Dantooine a few times; once or twice as a Jedi Knight, and once more as something else._

_As a 'wound in the Force', or so Master Kavar had said._

_He walked next to her, his hands behind his back. He breathed in deeply, watching a group of birds fly over the broken ceiling of the ruined enclave. Sarii could make out the familiar sound of both of his lightsabers bumping against his belt._

_"You are unhappy, Sarii," Kavar murmured, watching her as she kicked a small rock across the ground._

_"Not unhappy, Master. More frustrated."_

_"You really have no one to blame but yourself, Padawan."_

_That didn't make it any better. Despite whatever kinds of technicalities Sarii used to deny it, the facts were still plain as day:_

_She was, like it or not, following Revan._

_"But I should be out here, Master. I should be trying to fight any threat against the Jedi. I shouldn't be upset about who or what it involves to defeat it."_

_Sarii paused, waiting for Kavar's reaction._

_"Right?"_

_The deceased Jedi Master idly lifted his hands to right a toppled chair. The chair floated up and landed gracefully on the rubble-covered floor of the ruined enclave. He glanced at her with a bemused smile on his face._

_"Perhaps you have forgotten what it was to follow her in the first place. It was once a path you were proud to walk."_

_Sarii watched as the walls of the enclave morphed into a dense fog, as Master Kavar stepped into it and met his Padawan._

_Her. Sarii gave her younger self the once-over; barely knighted, barely nineteen, barely past responding to Padawan Zhen quicker than Jedi Sarii._

_"I know of your plans, Padawan," Kavar began in a stern tone._

_Sarii remembered like it was yesterday how stupid she had felt, spending a full week trying to muster up the courage to tell her former master something that was written all over her face and easy enough for a child apprentice to read let alone a Jedi Master recently appointed to the Council._

_"Plans?" _

_Sarii smacked her forehead, listening to her younger self nervously repeat the word as if she had never heard it before._

_"A simple word for something as grave and consequential as war," Kavar added._

_She realized that both she and her younger self were twirling a piece of ginger-colored hair around their fingers in perfect unison._

_The younger Sarii quickly untangled her finger from her hair, straightening up as Kavar prepared to speak again._

_"You know nothing of battle. Nothing of death or war or pain."_

_She was unable to keep from flinching now, even though she had stopped herself then. Sarii knew that her master had seen all of them._

"_You have lived your life among the Jedi and you know nothing more than their lessons. Even your trials, even the most difficult of our training together will not be the slightest preparation for what awaits Revan, Malak, and those who follow them."_

_Sarii watched the younger version of herself gulp and stare defiantly back at her master, who had used a tone so harsh and final that she remembered half-expecting him to walk away right then and there, considering the matter closed._

_"Master Kavar, the lessons you and the Jedi taught me always said that our lives are to serve. We're supposed to be the bringers of justice in the galaxy. We're always supposed to be prepared to make whatever sacrifices are necessary to save the lives of innocent people-"_

_Sarii felt herself searching the archives and official texts of the Jedi in her head now as she had then, wanting to have exact quotes and irrefutable evidence, things her master could not use to argue against her case._

_"I don't understand why the Council is going against their own teachings, Master," the younger Sarii added resolutely. "The Republic needs us. It's our responsibility to help."_

_The countless midnight conversations and secret whisperings between training sessions among the eldest Padawans and the recently promoted knights had all led to the same conclusion: The Republic was in trouble. They were Jedi. You didn't need to be a Jedi Master or one of the two leaders in promoting the call to war to realize what that meant. _

_Not all of them had met Revan or Malak, though her brown braid of hair and his tattooed head were familiar sights (always storming down a corridor or striding into a room; Sarii had a perpetual memory of the backs of their heads). _

_"Your motives do you credit, as they do all Jedi who are outraged by the actions of the Mandalorians," Kavar continued patiently, "But you forget that we are also the guardians of peace, Padawan. You forget the Code: there is no ignorance, there is knowledge. We cannot defend against something we know nothing about-"_

_"The Mandalorians are attacking the Republic. They want to take over the galaxy. They've slaughtered thousands already- what more is there to know?"_

_The younger Sarii's face was beginning to turn red._

_She could remember that she hadn't quite known what it was that had made her skin feel so hot- whether it was embarrassment that she was digging herself into a hole trying to debate a Jedi Master, or indignation that he wasn't respecting her opinion after her promotion to Knight._

_"You spoke of sacrifice, Sarii," Master Kavar's voice was gentle now, like when she was a child and first chosen as a Padawan. "You and the others don't realize the extent of what you may lose in this war."_

_Back then she had thought he'd meant dying, a harsh fact that had made the Padawan swallow hard but still stare fearlessly back at him._

_Now the Exile understood that death was not the only way of losing your life: war could take from you whatever you had hoped would remain after the killing, whatever you valued most- in her case, the Order and the principles that had sent here there in the first place._

_"I'm a Jedi now, Master Kavar. And that means I can't stand by when there are people who need help."_

_"You haven't changed much, Padawan, though I sense you like to think you have," Kavar finally murmured, turning back to her, the younger Sarii fading into the mists like the forgotten character she was. "Admiral Onasi needs your help, and you believe that is the role of a Jedi, no matter what sacrifices must be made. Even sacrifices of pride."_

_"Well it is…isn't it?"_

_Sarii exhaled in frustration as Kavar gave her that bemused smile again and began to walk away from her, into the darkened expanses of the ruined enclave._

_"In short, Padawan Zhen: relax."_

"This is the part where you ask me what the hell I'm talking about."

Sarii was brought back to the present when Atton impatiently snapped his fingers in her face.

She shook her head, frowning at him.

"Well? What is it that I'm never going to believe?"

"I found a planet."

* * *

Mical and Mira were already in the cockpit when she and Atton came striding in.

"What type? Where is it? Is it far?" Sarii said breathlessly, sitting down in the co-pilot's chair.

"Whoa, slow down there. I think you're starting to drool, Master Jedi," Mira goaded, but she wore the same relieved smile that the rest of them did.

They had the maps up until a few parsecs beyond the Outer Rim, but anything past that- certainly including the sector they were currently in- was uncharted territory. They had the last known coordinates of Revan's ship, but making a quick hyperspace jump to those coordinates was not only dangerous (considering they didn't know what had stopped the former Sith Lord's messages) but would bypass any planets or settlements that might hold some information.

It had been a slow, month-long drift into the Unknown Regions without any sign of life or activity. And now, an entire planet. Sarii felt like she was entitled to a little drool.

"The climate is dry…I would venture even cool. It appears to have once been a volcanic planet, but the mounts have since collapsed in on themselves. The hardening of the lava within the craters has formed a kind of crust, which would cool the planet's core considerably," Mical reported from where he stood by the _Ebon Hawk_'s navigational system. "Settlements are scattered over its surface-"

"Hey, I never said it was the _best _planet," Atton interrupted defensively. "But it's still right in the neighborhood. And we're not picking up any massive fleets or battle cruisers waiting for us."

Sarii finally noticed the planet itself growing larger in the windows of the cockpit; the color of mud, its surface pockmarked with expansive craters.

"It looks like a giant asteroid," she noted.

"There's a whole field of 'em a couple parsecs over," Mira said. "Luckily we don't have to go near it."

"You two might want to lose the hoods and tabards," she added, motioning with her head towards Sarii and then Mical.

Sarii glanced over her shoulder at the bounty hunter.

"Huh?"

"Your Jedi robes. Probably not the best idea to wear them out in public. Just in case we run into any, oh, I don't know…_Sith_."

Sarii and her Padawan obediently rose and moved towards the back of the ship.

"I do not feel the evil presence we were warned against," Mical said at her side. "This planet feels as harmless as Tatooine."

"We're probably not going to feel it, Padawan," Sarii answered as they neared the center of the ship where it split off into the gendered crew quarters. "Which is going to make finding what we seek a lot harder."

His brow furrowed as he glanced over his shoulder at her retreating form, his mouth twisting up into a pondering frown.

Now that she was a Master herself, she had learned all the tricks. Including hiding what you were actually thinking from your apprentice and giving him what masters were supposed to say instead.

_Actually, Padawan, I have no idea of what to expect and I'm kind of nervous._

And the only evidence Sarii had to support any of her assumptions about the Unknown Regions or the true Sith was long dead, although the quarters still vaguely smelled of that Peragus morgue scent that had lingered on the old woman.

_Should have known just by that, _Sarii thought ruefully, tossing parts of her robes against a cot and slipping into old civilian clothing and armor. _What kind of wizened Jedi Master who wants to help you reconnect with the Force pretends to be lying dead in a morgue before popping awake and feeding you riddles?_

She had been more concerned than suspicious at the time- an old woman, wrinkled like grandmothers Sarii could barely remember, slightly bowed like she had a hump in her back- just an old woman in pain.

_And she said she was Revan's master…should have known from that too. No one saw Revan coming._

_I didn't see Kreia coming either._

When they returned to the cockpit, the planet was practically engulfing their view, casting a slightly orange hue over the interior. It made Mira's hair practically glow and the whites of their eyes red like they had all been using stims.

"Any word from the Admiral?" Sarii murmured. Atton shook his head.

"His ship's barely crossed the Outer Rim limits," he said, glancing down at the console where the tiny blinking outline of Onasi's freighter (fitted with a homing device so they could keep track of each other) sat on the edge of the star map.

"He's got to be at least a month behind by now. Happens when you waste a bunch of time on Coruscant."

"Send our coordinates anyways," Sarii said. The pilot shook his head but complied.

"Has this place got a name?" Mira asked no one in particular.

"_Unidentified ship_-"

The coarse voice that barked out of the console made them all jump.

"What's the story on those settlements, Mical?" Sarii whispered back to her Padawan, despite the fact that whoever had just addressed them had no way of hearing her unless they started transmitting.

"The planet's surface areas are scattered like an archipelago separated by craters. The settlements are on the thin valleys between them. The only transmission-capable area is a concentrated spaceport on the far side of-"

"_Export or import, unidentified ship?_" The voice sounded almost bored.

"Aren't they transmitting any ID signatures? Like the name of the port or the planet or something like that?" Sarii asked, leaning towards Atton.

He batted her falling hair out of his face.

"We're in the _Unknown _Regions. We're not supposed to know how to get to them and they're not supposed to know how to get to us. There's no reason for them to suspect we're not local. I'm betting they think we're supposed to be here if we've managed to get here at all."

"And if we're smart," Mira added. "We'll let them go on thinking that."

"_Ebon Hawk_, arriving for export," Atton answered casually to the coarse voice over the communication system.

There was a moment of fumbling static before the voice replied.

"_Cleared for landing at receiving port twelve, _Ebon Hawk."

_Sounds just like any other port authority on any coreward planet, _Sarii thought somewhat disappointedly.

What with all the constant warnings about what was awaiting them in the Unknown Regions, it was kind of anticlimactic to be told you could land on your first planet with no trouble.

"His transmission of the port's location included the name of the planet," Mical said belatedly. "The port is located in a settlement called Danok. The planet is Teren."

_Teren. Big orange crater-y planet. No sign of Sith yet. Some kind of trade route that Atton's gone and stuck us in-_

"Atton, what happens when we get down there and they start asking questions?"

He glanced over at her with a wry smirk. "Well I couldn't say import, could I? We haven't got any cargo to give them if they ask…unless you and Mical over there want to play Jedi bounties-"

"All right, calm down, I was only kidding," he muttered, holding up a hand in surrender when he saw her glare.

"Anyways, don't worry. Maybe they won't ask any questions," Atton added, piloting the ship into the atmosphere. They breezed through a few brown clouds before breaking through to hang over the enormous craters that marked the planet's surface. They expanded in circles so wide and deep that Sarii couldn't even estimate at how far down they went or how much of the surface they had claimed.

"Maybe there'll be Sith waiting for us with lightsabers and a friendly hello-"

"Atton, shut up."

Craggy bluffs and rocky terrain shaped the winding plains between the craters. Sarii could make out a few small structures isolated in large patches of land.

_Farmers? What do they possibly farm, rock?_

She finally noticed the port settlement, Danok.

Or what passed for a settlement in the Unknown Regions. To Sarii, it looked like an ultra-fortified military base. The exterior of the structure was such that if the _Ebon Hawk _were to take a sudden nose dive into the side of it, she was reasonably sure that it would fold up and fall to the ground without having made a dent.

_Are they attacked often? By who? And for what? Rock?_

The ship landed with its usual chorus of creaks and groans.

"Okay," Sarii breathed. "Be ready for…well, just about anything."

"Not a problem," Mira answered, tugging on the straps that held her wrist launcher snug against her arm.

For once the gangplank was down when they reached it; one of the first times in months that they didn't have to start jumping on it to get it to lower. Sarii began to walk down.

A strange vibration accompanied the touch of her foot to the platform. The gangplank rattled like she weighed more than a Hutt. Sarii exchanged a confused glance with Mical.

A hideous roar echoed up the walls of the _Ebon Hawk_, rough and slightly screeching.

"What the hell is that?" Atton said, wincing.

The vibrations shook the _Hawk _again, and Sarii peered down the platform to spot two massive brown pillars standing at the edge of the ship.

No, not pillars. Pillars didn't have claws.

Her double lightsaber glowed purple in the unlit stretch between the ship's exit and the grey steel of the hangar bay, extended in front of Sarii as she went charging down the gangplank.

And ran straight into a terentatek.

Whether the beast reacted to something running at it, or didn't like the sight of her lightsaber, or smelled her Force sensitive blood pounding in her heart, Sarii didn't know; but the creature reared up and swiped viciously at her.

Before she could squint her eyes shut and start wondering what it was going to be like to become one with the Force, something managed to yank the terentatek backwards. Its claws completely missed her.

"Whoa there…"

It was then that Sarii noticed the giant chains around the beast's neck. She scrambled up, silencing her lightsaber and motioning towards Mical to do the same.

"What kind of an idiot are you?"

The irritated snap came from the other end of the beast's chain- a human male with an unkempt graying beard and bushy eyebrows that had grown together.

Some kind of squirming creature half the size of Sarii was tossed to the terentatek, who swallowed it whole and gave her a last threatening growl.

"Uh…sorry. Didn't mean to upset it," Sarii replied quickly, still slightly paralyzed by the sight of a creature that had been myth as a child apprentice, urban legend as a teenage Padawan, and one heart-pounding error in judgment by Master Kavar during their training.

The man snorted indignantly.

"Running at 'em with your weapon drawn…don't you know anything about your own cargo? I suppose you're too young to remember the riots at Panek five years ago…"

"Bloody damn mess the whole thing was," he continued without waiting for her answer. "One tatek was startled, which made it turn on another, which made 'em massacre the entire sixth receiving port as well as rip down the wall and lay waste to a couple farms. Made 'em beef this whole place up in case any get out of control again-"

"Tatek?" Mical murmured.

The man's mouth screwed up in disgust.

"Yes, tatek. As in _'beast'_? As in terentatek, '_beast of Teren'_? Now I've got one here ready for you, and it doesn't look like this little piece of trash can hold anymore-"

"Terentateks are native to Korriban," Mical continued, undeterred. "Are any of these from-"

"Korriban's a rock in the middle of nowhere-"

_That doesn't make it much different from this place, _Sarii thought, biting her tongue to keep from saying it.

"Or more likely a myth for the history books," the man added, leaning over to spit onto the metallic flooring of the port. "Wouldn't know. No one's ever been there. Now will you load the tatek already? They tend to get antsy in large open spaces like this."

Their dock was a huge steel cube that looked out over the fathomless edge of a crater.

The man prodded the terentatek with what looked like a very long and pointy electro-staff. It lumbered towards their gangplank, barely short enough to fit up its tight corridor.

"We're…not quite ready to take on the cargo yet," Sarii said, trying to stall him. "Our ship's a little beat up-"

"Don't have to tell me twice," he interrupted rudely. "The thing looks like there could be a hull breach if the tatek stomped too hard. You're gonna have a hell of a time transporting one of these in there, but that's your funeral. You've got to be the greenest exporters I've ever met."

He sighed dramatically, pushing the terentatek back towards a huge cage.

"Next shipment leaves in the morning. Better be ready by then. And here," he barked, effortlessly tossing her a datapad and handling the beast's chain. "Educate yourself."

The datapad hit Sarii in the arm and Mical reached forward to catch it. She leaned towards him to read it:

_Terentatek Handling Procedures _scrolled across the heading of the datapad.

_We're on Teren, the first planet in the Unknown Regions, in a port called Danok. No Sith yet. There's apparently farmers of…rock, and a bustling trade route in the Force-resistant beasts known as terentateks, which are native to the planet and not Korriban, and of which Atton's now made us a primary exporter-_

"Well, this stinks. I was hoping for some spice," Atton finally said.

"Nice job, Rand," Mira hissed. "You got us a pet that looks like a rancor's cousin. Why couldn't it have been gizka or something?"

"The tatek is born and bred on the planet of Teren-" Mical read in a quiet voice.

"I guess that's what all the farmers do," she replied, ignoring Mira and Atton.

"-They are naturally aggressive creatures, especially when provoked by bright light, open spaces, and the presence of the Force. This makes them desirable guardians and enforcers for communities of Force sensitives or areas with a strong Force presence-"

_That's why he didn't react to our lightsabers, _she thought, glancing after the retreating terentatak handler. _Sith are probably around here making purchases a lot._

"We've got until morning…hopefully that's not in five hours or something," Atton said. "We'll just jet out of here and conveniently 'forget' our cargo."

"The trade route's got to be to other planets in the Unknown Regions," Sarii murmured at her Padawan's side. "Planets where there are Sith."

"Uh huh," Mira said, rolling her eyes at Atton. "You going optimistic on me, Rand? There's probably some Sith Lord up in a balcony somewhere plotting our demise right now."

"Perhaps by playing along as exporters we can procure a map."

Sarii raised an eyebrow at Mical's unusually sneaky suggestion.

"Or something to that effect," Mical added.

_Good job, Padawan. Being a good Jedi means knowing that we aren't supposed to lie, but knowing when we have to. _He nodded deferently.

Sarii turned towards the nearest exit. The dock led to a row of ordinary trading stands and the obligatory cantina.

"You look like you had something sour," Atton murmured, catching up to her.

"I guess I was expecting something…more exotic on an unknown planet."

"What, cultural opportunities?" Mira snorted behind them.

_Gather information, maybe do some snooping and find some maps, figure out where you are in relation to the rest of the Unknown Regions, figure out the political situation, find out _something _about the Sith-_

Something started beeping anxiously from where Mical walked next to Mira. Her Padawan reached into his pack and pulled out the small com-scan unit, one of the latest pieces of Republic technology. It was one of the many devices they had been given before embarking on their mission; capable of transmitting anything sent to the ship to them no matter where they were on a planet.

"It's a message from the Admiral to the _Ebon Hawk_."

Sarii stood, waiting patiently for Mical's explanation.

Atton Rand wasn't so patient. He moved to stare over Mical's shoulder. Her Padawan's brow furrowed but he made no effort to get away from the pilot.

Atton's eyes darted over the com-scan unit. Then he broke into laughter, shaking his head and rubbing a temple. He glanced up at her, and then started laughing again, unable to continue.

"You've _got_ to be kidding me," he finally managed to sputter.

"This is something of a serious situation, Atton," Mical murmured.

Atton only laughed again.

"What is it?" Sarii asked.

"The Admiral is sending a distress call. His ship is badly damaged. He intends on landing here and asks if we'll work on procuring parts-"

"The Admiral's obviously a little rusty," Atton broke in with a chuckle, cutting Mical off.

"I don't care which one of you tells us, but one of you is going to get a good backhand across the jaw if you don't do it soon," Mira snapped.

Atton folded his arms and leaned back against the doorframe of the dock's exit, smirking and shaking his head one last time.

"Admiral Carth Onasi, famous hero and supposed crack pilot of the Republic, just popped out of hyperspace into an asteroid field."


	8. Chapter 7

_We don't have that kind of time…_

Carth absent-mindedly rubbed his knee, now sure to have a bruise from where it had banged against the metal bulkhead for at least the sixth time. For some reason his legs kept stretching themselves out under the small navigational workstation in the cockpit, despite the fact that there was no additional room beyond a couple of centimeters.

_Because you're used to finding more than metal bulkheads at your feet when you're working._

What he was used to finding, what his wayward feet kept searching for, was back near the Core worlds, far away on Coruscant.

"It'll be all right, Jawa. Everyone here's a Jedi, just like Mommy and Dustil."

_Who are you reassuring, Onasi? Her or you?_

Celyn had stood behind him, peering out with a wary look on her face.

He didn't blame her. The sun was barely up, casting contorted shadows of the dozen or so children in the room across the pale geometric patterns in the floor. It was deathly quiet; a couple of the older ones were absorbed in datapads, but most of them sat with their legs folded and their hands resting on their knees in meditation.

No, they weren't sitting. They were _floating_. And either they didn't notice him standing in the doorway in his old orange flight jacket with a little girl hiding behind him, or they didn't think it was anything out of the ordinary.

Nope. He didn't blame Celyn in the slightest. It looked like the beginnings of a kid-sized cult.

"Now Celyn-"

He had turned and half-knelt to say a final goodbye to her, but his daughter just squeezed his hand, lifted her chin and walked right past him.

_Well. That's rich, _he thought, rolling his eyes and watching her for a second or so as she walked down the few steps into the room.

The child Jedi apprentices might not have noticed him, but they did notice Celyn. A few opened their eyes or glanced up at her as she passed them.

_You're just like your mother, Jawa-_

One of the meditating children had dropped one of the objects they had been levitating. He watched Celyn pause and retrieve it from the floor, inspecting it before holding it towards the apprentice and saying something. The Jedi kid floated back to the floor clumsily, glancing up at Celyn and finally answering.

_Except for that, _he had thought with a smile, turning around and finally leaving, leaving her for good._ Because Katrina would have tried to make the thing turn cartwheels in the air before giving it back to the kid._

Carth leaned back in his chair, rubbing his neck and staring vaguely at the star maps in front of him. Thinking about her for too long always ended in something bad. Either he got angry that she had left in the first place, or he got worried that something had happened to her. Or, he began to miss her enough that he started imagining she was here, standing over his shoulder or curled up in the co-pilot's seat. He sighed.

_Where are you, gorgeous?_

Katrina Onasi, whom he hadn't seen in nearly a year and one month. Revan, whom he hadn't heard from in almost seven months. He already worried that every passing day was just bringing him closer to his now-recurring nightmare:

_"Father?"_

_Carth glanced up at Dustil's hand, heavy on his shoulder. He followed it up to Dustil's face, which looked unusually guilty._

_"What's wrong?"_

_Dustil sat down in the co-pilot's chair, clasping his hands together and leaning forward to rest his arms on his knees._

_His Force-sensitive son, able to sense what was going to happen, able to know the fate of those he was connected with, including his former master, sighed once._

_"We can go home, Father. Revan's dead."_

Carth turned his attention back to the star maps and the navigational array lying out in front of him. Going sublight they were a month behind the _Ebon Hawk_'s position at the first real planet past the boundaries of the Outer Rim. He checked his calculations once more. They looked right. They matched up with the _Hawk_'s last position. Open space, nothing to impede a ship dropping out of hyperspace.

_Never make a hyperspace jump into uncharted territory._

That wasn't something you were taught in the Fleet; that was something every idiot who could pilot a freighter knew.

_But this is someplace she might have stopped; someplace she might have been…_

A lot of things could happen in a month. And they didn't have that kind of time to waste.

He pushed himself up from the navigational workstation and stretched. Dustil entered the cramped cockpit, batting one of his flexing elbows out of his way.

"Hey, what do you know- more stars," he said, rolling his eyes and dropping into the pilot's chair.

Carth sometimes wondered how the hell Dustil could be a Jedi Knight, founder of a future Jedi Academy, engaged to be married, and still manage to slouch and look as utterly bored as he did right now.

"Cheer up. We're going to catch up to the _Hawk _and that planet soon."

"With the state that thing is in, it'll probably slow down enough to catch up to _us_," his son muttered.

"What's with everybody knocking the _Hawk_ lately? Sure, it's a little beat up, but hell, it saved the galaxy in its day."

Dustil gave him a wicked smile. "They'll be saying that about _you_ in a couple years."

Carth slapped him on the shoulder with the datapad and dropped it into his lap. His son only laughed. Dustil turned the datapad right side up and glanced over it.

"We're making a hyperspace jump?"

Carth reached up and hit a couple switches, making the adjustments necessary to send the _Chaser _into hyperspace. He nodded to Dustil. His son leaned forward and punched in the coordinates.

The _Chaser_'s engines gave a slow crescendo up to a high pitch, and the stars turned into long blue and white lines around them.

The slight heaviness of hyperspace travel pressed Carth back into his chair. The rhythm of a hyperspace jump was comforting. Members of the Fleet learned it was the best place to be; no one could attack you in the midst of a hyperspace jump.

He was so relaxed and confident that it came as a complete shock when Dustil reached for the controls to pull them out of the jump and a huge wall of brown rock appeared, just centimeters from the windows of the cockpit.

The _Chaser _made a sharp nose dive, only to meet another brown rock, punctured with dozens of holes that ranged from tiny dots to larger burrows.

"Frack, frack, _frack_-"

Dustil's entire body shifted as he worked the controls, punctuating each successfully cleared rock with a 'frack'.

Carth blinked a few times to make sure that the field of innumerable asteroids in front of his eyes wasn't his imagination. The _Chaser _swung wildly to the left in an effort to avoid another one, only to practically bounce into a smaller asteroid. The shield alarms began ringing loudly.

Nope. Definitely not his imagination.

"What the hell did you do?" Carth shouted.

"It wasn't me! It was you and your stupid coordinates!" Dustil protested. The _Chaser _rocked violently as their hull barely scraped another asteroid.

_Need to get in the pilot's chair, need to be the one flying us out of this mess-_

"Give me the controls-"

"No, I can do it-"

"Give me the damn controls, Dustil!"

His son quickly slid out of the pilot's chair. Carth barely had time to maneuver the ship between two asteroids heading straight for either side.

The field seemed like it would never end. The asteroids hurtling towards him were gigantic and brown and full of holes that, from far away, looked like they could swallow the _Jedi Chaser _whole.

Carth couldn't avoid side-swiping an angular rock to starboard. The ship began to shimmy violently.

_Must have calculated wrong, or gotten the wrong coordinates, something must have gone wrong-_

"Father, aren't you supposed be some kind of famous pilot? Can you _try_ not to hit every single hunk of space debris you see?" Dustil snapped, his hands clenched tightly around the edges of his seat.

"You're not too old to be grounded, you know," Carth shot back, feeling the sweat starting to run down his brow.

Dustil snorted. "From what, my _wedding_?"

_Concentrate, concentrate, pay attention, do not start wondering if you're going to live to see your son's wedding, do not start hating yourself for putting him in danger-_

The _Chaser_'s stabilizers finally kicked in and the ship righted itself. Carth began to weave between the asteroids, looking desperately for the end of the field. Another scraped loudly against the top of the cockpit and he involuntarily cringed, waiting for it to come crashing through the roof.

And then, as abruptly as they had entered the field, they were out of it. In front of them was a field of white stars and black space. The planet loomed off to the right, a burnt orange mass that looked slightly misshapen because of its craters.

Carth slumped backwards in the chair, reaching to unbutton his jacket. His vision was impaired by several sweaty strands of his own hair.

"You all right, Dustil?"

His son nodded, standing up and cautiously looking around; like the asteroids had developed sentient thought and were forming ranks, ready to strike again.

"If I ever complain about being bored again, hit me."

Carth sighed, putting his hands on his knees and pushing himself up from the chair, heading back towards the _Chaser_'s engine room.

Once he saw it, he didn't like the looks of the hyperdrive. For one, the readings were completely off the charts. The thing should have been doing triple-lightspeed from the numbers he saw on the wall console. For another, the edges of the access panel were singed. Trickles of smoke and electrical sparks licked out from its corners. He reached for the panel door and hissed loudly, holding his slightly burned fingers up to his lips.

Dustil stood in the doorway, scratching his head.

"So what now, Admiral?"

A month on a ship alone with his twenty-something son's smart-aleck behavior made Carth remind himself that glaring at Dustil wasn't going to solve anything. He managed to soften it to a stern parental gaze.

_Why don't you blow up the whole ship, Onasi? Save yourself some time-_

"Look, Father, it'll be all right-"

"Hey, you're the kid here, not the parent. You don't have to reassure me-"

"Well I wouldn't if you weren't broadcasting general panic wide enough for any Force sensitive in the area to pick up-"

"Oh for crying out…you see, this is why I can't stand Jedi," Carth snapped, whirling on Dustil, pointing an accusatory finger in his face. "There's always some greater, mystical plan to everything, some bigger threat that the rest of us can't possibly understand because we can't _feel_ it. You know, the galaxy's going to blow up by the time you people figure it out!"

Carth became aware of his half open jacket, his hair plastered to his sweaty brow, but most of all Dustil's critically raised eyebrow.

_Good job, Onasi, break the ship, tell your son his occupation is for losers-_

"Sorry, Dustil," he finally said. "I'm just…you…you shouldn't be out here. I shouldn't have left your sister. And we're both here because of Katrina's stupid idea that she has to fight these Sith she _feels_, even though there's no proof-"

"Revan's right about this one," Dustil replied flatly. "They exist, and they could crush the Order if they wanted to."

"How? Are there a lot of them? Do they have resources, manpower, what? What exactly happened out there while you two were in hiding?"

Because he didn't have a very clear idea. Hell, he'd been so glad to see them both, floored by the knowledge of pregnant Revan and smitten Dustil that the actual mechanics of her mysterious "I have to leave" speech and Dustil's supposed first-hand knowledge of these ancient Sith methods of conversion hadn't crossed his mind until Revan had already decided what she was going to tell him and what she was going to omit.

His son began to fidget, leaning forward to repeat Carth's earlier attempted inspection of the hyperdrive panel; biting his lip and shaking his burnt fingers.

"It's only going to upset you-"

"You want to know what I'm tired of, Dustil?" Carth began with a frown, watching Dustil pace around the small engine room nursing his hand.

"I'm tired of everyone treating me like I'm not a middle-aged Admiral in the Republic Fleet, like I haven't been through two wars already. I've seen and done a lot of things in my life, and I'm not going to crumble or die of despair if someone tells me something I don't particularly want to hear."

"Well good, we're agreed," Dustil continued weakly, turning towards the cockpit and walking to the doorway. "You don't want to hear about it, and I don't want to talk about it-"

"You don't have to protect me, son," Carth forced out slowly, though it was still direct enough to make Dustil glance over his shoulder.

The _Jedi Chaser _was a lot smaller than the _Ebon Hawk_; cockpit, engine room, cargo hold, captain's quarters and crew quarters made up its sleek design. But whoever had constructed it had made the most of its space. There were hundreds of various nooks for everyday activities, such as the low shelf in the engine room that acted like a bench. Carth seated himself on it, gesturing towards Dustil to join him.

His son watched him cautiously like it was some kind of trap.

"You won't understand, Father," he finally said, joining Carth on the bench. "It's beyond ships and firepower-"

"Let me worry about understanding, all right? Just tell me. Tell me what's so different, what's so horrible about these true or ancient Sith."

He didn't like the look on Dustil's face, and more so didn't like the fact that it was his questioning that was bringing it on.

"These Sith…they're really old Sith. They're either direct descendents of or the last survivors of the ancient Sith race, the beings that first learned to use the Force from dark Jedi who left the Order."

Carth struggled not to fall behind under terms like 'ancient Sith race' and 'dark Jedi who left the Order', parts of a history he and most of the galaxy had never been taught.

"And they're nothing like the Sith you've been fighting, they've got nothing to do with the Republic, not like the ones that blew up Telos or Admiral Karath or any of that. Not even like on Korriban or like Malak and-"

His son trailed off, avoiding his gaze.

"They're not out to kill us. They're not out to exterminate the Jedi-"

"Then what do they want?" Carth pressed.

"Us. Jedi. Modern Sith. All Force sensitives. They want us."

Dustil sighed heavily.

"Just the thought of conversion is frightening enough to the right people."

_My son is one of those right people. My son was a Sith._

"The fear and the anticipation are almost enough to make a Force user turn without their help." Dustil shifted uncomfortably next to him, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him, staring blankly across the room.

"They start with the usual torture- physical stuff like lightning. It burns. It burns cold though, not hot like you'd think it would. Your skin itches so much you feel like you want to rip it all off."

He'd never been hit with Force lightning. He'd watched Bastila, Juhani, Katrina and Jolee all grit their teeth and continue through it like it was just hail.

He wondered how many times Dustil had been jolted breathless by it, how many times his son had writhed on the ground in pain like Carth remembered watching Katrina and one of the kids from the Academy- _Melek? Mekel?_- do on Korriban.

The thought that it had even been once made his fists clench together.

"But that's nothing, Father. You've…you've been tortured before, you know-"

"I know." Carth said sharply.

_The _Leviathan. _Felt like I was being cut with eight-thousand vibroblades and then dipped in salt water. _

_Wanted it to stop, wanted to tell them all about the Jedi and the Star Forge and Morgana and Dustil and anything else they wanted to know-_

"That stuff's not enough to make a good Jedi turn. Pain can be worked through, pain you can meditate past, wounds you can heal. It's how they hurt people that aren't even there that ends up converting you."

"That doesn't make any sense, Dustil-"

"They take your memories and twist them. They show you variations on your past decisions or someone else's, or they show you what might have happened if you had made different choices."

He watched Dustil's clasped hands tremble slightly.

"And you try to remember what really happened before they messed with your memory of something, but all you can see is their version. And then you start to wonder if their version is actually how it happened."

_He had been barely asleep, so it wasn't a surprise that even her small jolt, sigh, and resettling into the pillow had disturbed him._

_Carth rolled over._

_"Revan?" Her eyes opened obediently._

_"You all right?" She nodded even though the stiffness in her body was visibly painful. Carth grasped her hand._

_"Just another memory," Katrina whispered._

_"I'm sorry, gorgeous. If I could make them stop, I would-"_

_"I don't want them to stop," she interrupted softly, closing her eyes. "I want them back. I want to stop wondering if I've done something before, only I just don't remember."_

They say the Force can do terrible things to a mind. It can wipe away your memories and destroy your very identity.

_I can't believe I said that to her…before we even knew-_

He became aware of Dustil inching away from him, ready to bolt for the cockpit.

"Hey, Dustil…" Carth tried to grasp his shoulder comfortingly, keep him from retreating, but his son's Jedi reflexes had him on his feet and a couple centimeters away from Carth before his hand could even touch him.

"If they…if we ever find them, Father," Dustil began, his tone stern like the Jedi Masters Carth never envisioned his son emulating. "If we're ever up against them in a fight…don't think about anything you care about. Don't think about me, don't think about Revan, don't think about Celyn…"

His son paused in the doorway, his back to Carth, whatever emotions creeping into his face hidden from Carth's view.

"And especially Mom," Dustil finished hoarsely. "Do _not_ think about Mom."

He considered chasing after him, although Dustil admittedly couldn't get much farther than the cockpit, and Carth could even see him slump down into the co-pilot's chair if he leaned over and peered down the corridor.

Carth clasped his hands together, waiting out the obligatory ten minutes to give Dustil time for contemplation, or meditation, or…whatever Jedi in a bad mood did.

"_Unidentified ship, export or import?_"

The ten minutes were up, and the gruff voice that asked Carth the question as he sat back down in the pilot's chair was not recognizably alien or Sith or anything else other than male and slightly bored. Dustil turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow expectantly.

"We've sustained heavy damage, unidentified port," Carth replied smoothly. "We're drifting towards you and request permission to land and make repairs."

His voice was smooth but the feeling in his stomach was anything but. He had absolutely no idea what to expect or how to prepare for it. Katrina's coordinates told him nothing but what direction to go.

And her messages weren't a big help either. He knew: he'd dissected every single one.

She had kept them on a strict timeline- two transmissions every month like clockwork. And then suddenly, inexplicably, they had stopped. There had been no slow down, no visible proof in what she wrote to him that anything had changed.

Carth frowned. It wasn't as if she had ever sent him anything useful anyways. She never said a word about where she was or what she was doing; only generic letters about how she missed him and Celyn, questions about Dustil, or, rarest of all, how she was feeling.

_Nothing helpful like, say, planet names and affiliations and what the hell 'export or import' might mean…_

"_Temporary docking granted in distribution port six._"

Carth shook his head, sitting up over the console and moving the _Chaser _towards the planet's atmosphere.

_I don't see any Sith yet, beautiful. You still haven't convinced me. _He glanced over at Dustil, who had come pretty close.

It infuriated him that there were things in the galaxy he would never even have a chance to protect them from. It infuriated him more that there was a whole dimension to Dustil and Katrina and even Celyn's lives that he could never grasp because he wasn't Force-sensitive.

But that wasn't about to make him stop trying.


	9. Chapter 8

"Look, missy, I'm sorry you're having so much trouble," the shopkeeper said flatly, leaning across the counter towards Sarii.

She tried to make herself stop looking as exasperated as she felt. It was no doubt her facial expression that was giving the human shopkeeper- an older male with a frizzy black ponytail- his half-lecturing tone.

"But hyperdrive parts aren't items we get shipments of, nor are they regular bartering items. Busted-up ships like yours just aren't the norm around here-"

"It isn't for my ship, it's for a friend-"

"Now you don't have to be embarrassed about it," the shopkeeper continued soothingly. "Everyone's down on their luck now and then, I suppose…"

Sarii was having urges to do things that were distinctly un-Jedi; like storming out of the shop in a huff, or unleashing her rant about the useless port and the useless planet and the useless people around her on the shopkeeper.

Instead she nodded.

"I understand then. I'll keep looking. Thanks for your help."

They'd been spending the better part of a half-hour going from trading post to small shop within the Danok port. Change the hair color and gender of the shopkeeper she had just talked to a few times, and she had pretty much had the exact same conversation with each one.

"I don't get it," Mira muttered behind her, the leather of her short jacket crinkling as she folded her arms. "How can people not need ship parts? Is there a speed limit around here or something?"

"I guess there aren't many space battles," Sarii answered.

"Or high-speed starship collisions," Atton said, gesturing lazily towards the next trading post.

_If this is entirely Sith space, then there would be no cause for battles, _Mical offered. _Unless there is a Republic or Jedi presence here, they would seem to have no opposition._

_That would make sense, _Sarii agreed. _Certainly an undisturbed trade route would mean that there isn't much stopping the shipment of Force-resistant beasts probably used for less-than-noble purposes._

_But who's they? _

This last thought she kept to herself, determined that the next person she talked to was going to tell her something about the Sith; whether they were a governing political body, or just the local religious sect and the Unknown Regions were run by a confederation similar to the Republic, or whether they existed out here at all.

The small stand was empty. Sarii peered over the counter, past the displays of rations and medpacs and basic droid parts.

"Hello?"

The figure behind the counter tried to stand too quickly from where it was bent over and whacked its head on the flat surface, swearing under its breath.

The owner of the stand was an older woman in her late forties or fifties. She rubbed her mass of graying hair before frowning at Sarii and her companions.

"I hope you're a little more careful around the tateks. They'll give you a lot worse than a scolding if you sneak up on one of them…"

The woman trailed off. Sarii returned her hesitant stare for a moment, wondering what the woman found so strange about her.

Something dragged across the counter as she leaned back, and she realized that her lightsaber had been hanging out, lying on the counter as she had bent over it to check on the woman.

"Sorry, Master Jedi," the woman said somewhat begrudgingly. "I didn't know."

There was a tense moment in which Sarii could sense Mira unfolding her arms and screwing up her mouth; Atton raising an eyebrow, Mical barely suppressing the urge to ask the hundreds of questions she knew he was already preparing in his head.

"That's…all right," she replied slowly, trying to think of some casual way to begin.

"_From such small things, from such critical points, the universe and its masses may be moved... that is why you must be careful in all that you do, and in every choice you make."_

She didn't need Kreia let alone anyone else to tell her that; Sith Lord, Jedi Master, occasionally both or otherwise. Despite the somewhat innocuous flavor of Taren so far, Sarii was trying to stay on her guard.

Did the Order exist out here? How had this woman pegged her for a Jedi from an unextended lightsaber?

_And am I ever going to get Kreia's voice out of my head?_

"Do a lot of Jedi usually do business with you?"

The woman nodded vigorously. "Oh yes, Master Jedi. I even give them a discount. No Jedi has ever had a problem with Sveta's stand-"

_Okay, so there have been Jedi here before? A lot of them?_

"Are there any Jedi here now?"

Sveta eyed the section of her belt where the woman now knew Sarii's lightsaber was hanging suspiciously. She folded her arms over her chest, tilting her head to the side. One of her long, danging metal earrings shook with the motion and half tangled in the folds of her clothing.

"Not on this planet. Unless you Jedi have made new plans to settle here as well."

Sveta continued to stare at Sarii as she straightened items on her stand protectively, like Sarii was going to trash the stand any minute.

_Okay, she's worried that Jedi will settle here and it'll be bad for business, possibly for the planet…why?_

"Do the Jedi typically…um…settle on planets like this?" Mira murmured, taking a few steps forward.

"They could if they wanted to, I suppose," Sveta snapped. "But I won't use up your valuable time with rumors, Master Jedi. I've heard the stories of what Jedi do to people who can't answer their questions. I even saw one once. He killed the port officer and a good breeding tatek, and no one even found out the reason."

_Okay…they have a very skewed idea of what a Jedi is-_

_The Sith here must refer to themselves as Jedi, _Mical suddenly said. She could hear that breathless exuberance in her mind as easily as she could hear it in his voice when he spoke aloud. _This would fall in line with their roles as descendents of the original dark Jedi, who believed that they were what the Jedi were supposed to be._

Sveta tapped her fingers on the counter impatiently. The trader didn't seem to fear them anymore. Sarii could sense the woman's thoughts of being ousted from home and hearth as well as the memory of the only Jedi close encounter she had ever had overriding fear and replacing it with anger.

_It may be a purposeful move as well, _Mical pondered, getting lost in his own thoughts and her own head. _One to try and turn all sentients in this area of space against the Order should they ever choose to make a larger strike in Republic space-_

"Well, Master Jedi? What can I do for you?"

Atton poked her in the ribs. "Ship parts?" he whispered.

"Right…we're looking for ship parts," Sarii said, straightening up.

The woman shook her head.

"Don't have any. Looks like we should start thinking about it, though, what with the two beat up ships I've heard are sitting in the complex. Would one of those be yours?"

_Two…I guess the Admiral's here._

She struggled not to feel bad that she hadn't been able to follow his instructions to find hyperdrive parts, that she would have to walk up to him and say that he was stranded unless he could figure something out.

_"You realize what this means, General Zhen."_

_She nodded bravely, keeping her hands clasped behind her back and concentrating on the metallic detailing on her Jedi leader's high collar._

_Malak frowned, glancing off to the side as he leaned over the holographic projection table in the center of the Republic command ship. Over the circular computer screen Sarii saw the movements of various troops; tiny masses of red and green over the surface of Ithull._

_She struggled not to let her shoulders slump when she noticed a vast wall of red (the computer representation of Mandalorian troops) covering one corner of the hologram. _

_"Your decision has cost us the northern barrier. The time to strike was now, when the Mandalorians were distracted by the onslaught from General Frey's men. Another chance may not present itself." The Jedi paused._

_"She will not be pleased."_

_There was an underlying tone of resignation in his voice. Sarii wondered what it was like for him: rumored to be her closest friend (some even whispered lover); having to take her orders._

"Look, there's got to be ship parts _somewhere _on this planet," Mira said exasperatedly, elbowing her way in front of them. "Is there an outside dealer? A local trader not in this dock?"

Sveta cocked her head to the side and stared upwards for a moment, like the answer was written on the ceiling.

"Well…there was some freighter wreckage from the riots at Panok years ago. It was all dragged out to the nearest disposal crater, but I doubt it's been tossed in yet."

"Disposal crater?" Sarii inquired.

"Surely you've noticed the craters on the planet…how you could probably fit a small moon in them with room to spare?" Sveta replied, lips twitching as she resisted whatever condescending smirk went along with the eye roll she hadn't been able to suppress. "We use one for garbage disposal, but dumps can only be made at certain times, when tatek breeding season is over and there's no seismic activity within the crater to interrupt."

"I guess you never know what might happen when you dump a bunch of freighters into a giant hole," Atton murmured.

"Where would this be?" Mical asked.

"You'll have to exit the complex and head south," Sveta replied. "There's a beaten path that runs along the crater we're situated on and goes past a few farms. The next crater's maybe five or six kilometers down the path, I think."

Sarii nodded to the woman.

"Thank you for your help."

_We should tell her not to fear the Jedi, _her Padawan added, stepping forward to begin whatever speech he had planned. He glanced over his shoulder at her. _We should tell her the true nature of the Order._

_We can't, Mical, _Sarii answered, grasping his arm and pulling him away.

Down the end of the corridor towards the docks Sarii could make out the outline of two men. She was reasonably sure of their identities without seeing them up close- one was Force-sensitive and the other wasn't.

_Say we try and tell her that the Jedi don't believe in killing people who upset them or causing destruction the way the Sith she saw did, _she continued to her Padawan, who trailed alongside her where she walked behind Atton and Mira._ What if she thinks the next "Jedi" she meets is just as friendly as we told her they are? They might kill her-_

"_Be careful of charity and kindness, lest you do more harm with open hands than with a clenched fist."_

Sarii trailed off, taking a few brisk steps to put herself in front of Mical. Kreia had done enough damage. She didn't want to pass it onto her Padawan.

The Admiral and his son approached. She suspected that if the younger one grew a beard, he would probably look like his father's slightly thinner twin.

"That has got to be the ugliest jacket I've ever seen," Mira whispered conspiratorially in her ear.

He looked a lot less like an Admiral and more like the character plastered all over Republic propaganda in the few years following the Star Forge. Sarii had seen this Carth Onasi before; in the now faded orange jacket, the pair of blaster holsters at his sides.

He stopped in front of them, nodding in greeting.

"Have fun in the asteroid field?" Atton said, smirking.

"We hit a couple bumps, but it wasn't a problem," Onasi replied airily. His son snorted next to him.

Dustil Onasi didn't look like a Jedi. The only thing that gave him away was the lightsaber dangling from his belt. Her Padawan folded his arms and watched him with an almost haughty air.

"Jedi Knight Dustil."

"Padawan Mical," the Admiral's son murmured.

Sarii didn't think the title of 'Jedi Knight' and that kind of shameless grin went together very well. She frowned, suddenly feeling ridiculously protective of Mical, only a few inches taller and a few years younger than her.

_Of course Jedi Knight Dustil's smug. He's _her _Padawan-_

"You might have _asked_ if you needed information-" Mical suddenly continued, glaring uncharacteristically.

Dustil raised an eyebrow like Mical's resentment was amusing.

"Hey, she needed it for her trip, and no one was supposed to know about it-"

_I'll bet she did, _Sarii thought angrily.

"Let's not get into a fight here, boys," Mira said, putting a hand on her hip. "All that staring and you're going to put out an eye or something."

"First things first," the Admiral broke in firmly. "Have you found anything?"

"Just that they call themselves Jedi," Sarii answered quietly. "And they've been here before. The terentateks are run in a trade route to other planets in their space."

Onasi nodded, glancing around him and taking in the steel walls, high ceilings, and sparse surroundings of the Danok port.

"I figured. This place doesn't exactly scream secret ancient Sith stronghold."

"The only parts on this planet are sitting in ruined ships at a dumping facility a few kilometers outside of this complex," she informed him.

"We're on a time limit on how long we can use their docking facilities, so I guess getting the parts should be first priority. You lead the way." He turned to his son.

"We won't be too long. Until then, see what you can find out. I'd start by checking out-"

"-That cantina," Dustil finished. "Got it."

_You should go with him, Mical, _Sarii said, trying not to make it sound as begrudging as it felt. _Learn to work with him. You're both Jedi. _

"I'll accompany you," Mical murmured resignedly, glancing over his shoulder with narrowed eyebrows at her as she turned to leave.

"Let's get going then. If I have to take a really long walk down an orange path to a garbage dump, I want some time for a drink when I get back," Atton muttered next to her.

She suddenly remembered the way the Admiral's gaze had lingered on the pilot back on the Citadel; the same way he was watching Atton Rand now with that stony look of barely suppressed suspicion.

"You're staying here," Sarii replied, squeezing his arm as she passed him. "Make sure they don't kill each other or something."

The pilot made a few sputtering sounds.

_Better to keep them apart- better to keep him from anything close to Revan too, _Sarii thought, tossing him what she hoped was a reassuring smile towards him as she hurried to catch up with the bounty hunter and the Admiral.

* * *

The path leading away from the complex was like finely sifted sand; bright orange sand that sat in little piles and long rippling lines from wind that must have existed long ago.

"How the hell can it be this cold on a planet with no ice or water to be seen?" Mira chattered, trying in vain to wrap her leather jacket and blue shirt around her. There wasn't enough material to reach her stomach or her lower back, and the bounty hunter shivered.

Sarii blew into her hands, rubbing them together. The Danok port must have been climate controlled, because the outside environment of the planet itself was a good twenty or thirty degrees colder. None of them were prepared for the shift in temperature. Sarii took a few extra steps to keep up with Mira, who was practically jogging in an effort to beat the cold.

"I'm beginning to think it's possible for a woman to die from being too stubborn," Onasi muttered behind them, offering Mira his jacket for the third time and receiving only the bounty hunter's dismissive wave.

"Yeah, well, sometimes they don't have a choice," Mira ranted to herself, sneezing. "Obviously you've never had to put on a Hutt dancing costume to earn a few credits like our Jedi friend over here."

The shudder that went through Sarii was definitely not from the cold.

_The Hutt's tongue lolled out of his mouth, and Sarii struggled not to retch. She didn't understand how he was buying her "dance"- she was just stringing lightsaber stances together._

The Admiral laughed.

"Um…no, can't say that I have."

Behind the next ridge rose the jagged edge of a freighter. It stuck up on the edge of the crater at a severe angle, almost ninety degrees. Scattered parts of other ships; electrical wiring, hoses, and bulkheads flowed out of them thick like patches of flowers or grass.

Onasi burrowed into his collar, rolled up his sleeves and dug right into the ruins.

"So the Sith out here are calling themselves Jedi?" he murmured nonchalantly, banging on the paneling of a nearby fighter.

"They believe their way of using the Force is the way the Jedi are supposed to be," Sarii answered, standing back and waiting patiently in case he needed her help. "That's why they're trying to convert them."

"That's what…" Onasi grunted as he yanked off the panel. "…my son said. That they're only after the Jedi, not the Republic."

He burrowed halfway inside the hole he had created, digging around for a few moments before abandoning it and walking further into the wreckage.

"I almost started firing on the damn place when I saw one of those terentek…taten…those Force beasts lumbering around in the dock. You say they've got some kind of trade route to the Sith in those?"

"We're hoping to somehow get maps to the routes they follow and the planets they visit."

She tensed when there was a loud groaning from the giant wing of the smashed freighter Onasi was crouched under. He watched it cautiously for a minute before going back to his inspections.

"And you didn't find out anything more than that? No numbers or capabilities or anything?"

"We didn't exactly have a questionnaire all ready for the locals to fill out here, Admiral," Mira said wryly. "We're pretty much winging it here, same as you."

Onasi started dismantling the hyperdrive fixture in front of him; unscrewing panels and following wires with his fingers.

"Did they happen to…did anyone you asked mention anything about Revan?"

_I didn't ask. And I'm not going to._

_You're being unfair, Sarii, _Kavar said disapprovingly. _Your favorite joke as a young apprentice was to append the Jedi Code to include the word understanding. Have you forgotten this?_

_Have _you _forgotten that I said that because I thought Atris was too hard on me during our group exercises? _she shot back to her former master._ It didn't have anything to do with refusing to find a traitor-_

"Or maybe someone named Katrina?" the Admiral added when both Sarii and Mira didn't answer.

He finally scoffed, shaking his head and continuing to set parts aside. "Right. I get it."

Mira glanced up at Sarii and gave her a _you're-on-your-own _kind of smirk, wandering off to gaze over the edge of the nearby crater.

"Look, I know you don't understand. I know you think I'm a traitor for not shooting her in the head the minute I found out," Onasi said quietly.

It was unsettling when someone who wasn't Force sensitive was able to guess her thoughts almost a hair's breadth away from being totally accurate.

"No, I don't," Sarii tried to say. "Jedi don't believe in-"

"I've known a lot of Jedi, sister. Probably more than I ever wanted to. I don't have to be one to know half of you don't practice what you preach. If you didn't think that at least on some level, you wouldn't be so against helping me."

She didn't answer, unable to argue against what she knew was true.

The silence was incredibly uncomfortable, and Sarii wound a piece of hair around her finger while the Admiral pushed himself up, wiping the flakes of long dried oil off of his hands and jacket.

"There's a thousand reasons why I should hate her," he said in a low voice. "And there's one or two that would be enough on their own. But…but when I met her she wasn't the person you know. She was just a beautiful woman stuck with me on some planet trying to save a Jedi."

Sarii struggled to accept that there were people in the galaxy who could apply the word 'beautiful' to the former dark lord Revan with a straight face.

"I love her, Sarii," Onasi finished, gathering up the parts and tucking them under his arm. "I love her enough that I left the Republic hanging to come find her. Don't…don't you think there's got to be something more to her if I'm willing to do all this?"

_She's lying to you. She's lying like she lied to all of us, like she made us believe that she was the consummate Jedi, that she was the kind of Jedi we wanted to be-_

"I hope so, Admiral," she made herself answer.

* * *

"Great," the pilot called Atton muttered. "The old man gets the girls and I get the Jedi wonder boys."

"Somehow I think the qualities you find so appealing in Master Zhen and Mira will be entirely lost on Admiral Onasi, Atton," Mical replied, rolling his eyes.

_Can't be completely lost on a guy who calls his wife 'beautiful'_, Dustil thought, squirming uncomfortably even though 'Beautiful' and his father were nowhere near him.

He turned and headed back down the corridor towards the cantina they'd noticed upon first entering the Danok port.

"I…apologize for my conduct, Dustil," Mical said quietly. Dustil knew a Jedi-Code-induced apology when he heard one.

"What conduct?" he answered. "So far you haven't done anything your master hasn't shown you how to do."

Atton laughed behind Dustil, quickly silencing it upon seeing Mical's glare.

"Neither, it appears, have you," the Jedi Padawan returned icily, falling silent as they entered the cantina.

Dustil didn't know what he had been expecting- all cantinas looked the same. Bar to the right, Pazaak tables to the left, tables filling the rest of the place. A couple battered and flickering viewscreens lined the walls and corners of the cantina, most playing what looked like wrestling matches between tarentateks.

It was mostly populated with local humans on their work breaks. The only aliens Dustil had noticed on the whole planet was a Twi'lek or two sitting around a viewscreen with other humans, wearing armor and carrying weapons.

_Mercs or smugglers, _he guessed, approaching the human bartender.

"I'm looking for someone," he began, and it took every inch of Jedi control in him not to screw up his face in disgust and start coughing when the man turned towards him, his drooping jowls opening in a wide yawn that let out the foulest smelling breath Dustil had ever encountered.

"So's a lot of other people. Who are you looking for?"

"A human woman, about late thirties-"

"Little old for you, eh son?"

This time Dustil couldn't resist the disgusted look. The bartender laughed heartily.

"I'm gonna need more than that. Not too many women in here as it is, but still…"

"She's a little shorter than me, brown hair, green eyes-"

"Woman in her thirties of average height with brown hair and green eyes," the bartender repeated, rolling his eyes and turning his back on Dustil. "Yeah, I've seen her. About eight thousand times."

Dustil frowned. _What the hell does he expect me to say? 'Scuse me, have you seen Revan?_

He had been trained never to mention her or her name or anything connected with her to anyone. And now here he was, expected to be able to make allusions to her to complete strangers still without giving away any crucial information.

It occurred to him that the name 'Revan' might not mean as much out here as it did in Republic space, if it meant anything at all.

"Sorry," the pilot called Atton stepped forward, clapping a hand on Dustil's shoulder. "He's not really good with words. We're looking for a human Jedi female who carries a single bladed lightsaber, wears that brown hair in a braid, has hazel eyes, about the same height as our friend here, trim figure, and answers to the name…uh…Katya…no, Kara-"

"Katrina," Dustil supplied.

"Right," Atton murmured, nodding in agreement. "Katrina."

The bartender screwed up his face in concentration, pulling on the edge of his chin.

"Don't know a name or anything, but I think I've met the one. Came around a long time ago…maybe a year, I don't know. Asked a lot of questions. Could bore a man to tears. I like my women pretty, but silent-"

"You wouldn't happen to know where she went or remember exactly what she asked, would you?" Dustil murmured, shrugging Atton off of his shoulder.

"Could you remember something that happened a year ago, kid?" the bartender replied, turning back to the wall of drinks and mechanical dispensers behind him.

_I remember things that happened ten years ago, _Dustil shot back silently, sliding off the bar stool and rubbing his neck.

"It appears Revan has visited this place," Mical murmured quietly. If anyone heard the name, no one reacted to it.

"Go ask around some more," Dustil motioned with his head towards other cantina patrons.

"Hey, who made you leader of this little bar-hopping jaunt, huh?" Atton protested, frowning severely at Dustil.

"My father the _Admiral_, that's who. Maybe you should be the one asking anyways. You certainly seem to know a lot about her."

Dustil couldn't think of a logical reason why this pilot, who couldn't have met Revan before (even if he was a former member of the Fleet and a deserter like Father had mentioned), would know what she looked like right down to the braided hair. Dustil frowned, trying to find out how-- and was met with the oddest urge:

To start counting off numbers in his head.

The pilot stared at him suspiciously, but finally moved off towards the corner tables of the cantina.

Dustil watched them canvass each regular, moving through the room with relative ease before disappearing around the corner to the back room and probably the standard cantina stage.

A chorus of catcalls and whistles came from near the bar, and he turned to look.

"_In other news_…"

He didn't need to look at the viewscreen to know who it was, having heard the phrase from her pretty pink lips a thousand times over.

_This Just In with Tova Vin _blared from the screen, more whistling and whooping coming from the barflies every time her smiling face, curly blonde hair, and piercing grey eyes flashed on the screen.

_You wish, you bunch of drunken spacers_, Dustil thought, smirking triumphantly.

"What a piece of civilian," some merc said with a grin.

The reception on the viewscreen was terrible; Tova's image shook and danced with a couple lines of static. Coruscanti broadcasts were the only things powerful enough to make it out here, and even then Tova's voice was garbled. Dustil couldn't make out anything she was saying.

But the poor reception didn't stop the cantina patrons' reactions.

"Gotta be able to use that mouth for something other than talking, right?" The men chuckled and nudged each other. Dustil rolled his eyes.

"Wonder if she's a natural blonde-"

He frowned, folding his arms and watching the Twi'lek who had made the comment receive slaps on the back.

"Lucky guy who gave her a promotion…probably had the time of his life making her earn it-"

He heard a strange popping noise and realized it was his knuckles.

"Give me one night with her- I've got something to be _Just In, _all right-"

Without being quite sure how it had happened, Dustil suddenly found himself on the other side of the cantina, the human who had made the last comment slammed up against the wall under his clenched fists.

"Try rephrasing that," Dustil snapped.

He heard the sounds of a couple blasters flying out of their holsters, the smooth slide of steel and the clicks of hair triggers.

It occurred to Dustil that maybe this hadn't been the best way to handle the situation.


	10. Chapter 9

Kosiah owns the last line, so send her fan mail if you enjoy it. What's with me being unable to think of all these amazing last lines lately? ;)

* * *

"…It had rolled under the seat of her escape pod."

Sarii put a hand up to her mouth to curtail her raucous laughter, which made a few locals and traders glance up as they re-entered the complex.

She and Mira walked on either side of the Admiral, who smirked and shook his head as he told his story.

"Without her lightsaber, Bastila was just one twenty-something Padawan against ten or fifteen scarred and ugly Black Vulkars. Needless to say, she didn't give them much trouble…physical trouble, anyways."

Sarii remembered Bastila Shan well from her days in the dormitories of the Jedi Temple and the Dantooine enclave:

_"This is our responsibility as Jedi and members of the Republic," one of the other Padawans said, smacking his fist into his palm to emphasize his point._

_Sarii nodded with a few of the others in agreement. They sat in a circle on the floor of one of the meditation rooms, talking quietly. They had considered speaking through the Force, but that would attract the notice of the Masters for sure. As it was they all kept glancing over their shoulders to see if any of the Masters had awakened, if one of them was heading down the darkened hallways to interrupt the meeting and demote them all back to apprentice._

_Padawan Bastila was the only one that did not react. She sat off to the side, her legs folded in front of her, her posture straight and tapered._

_"Padawan Bastila, you're not thinking of bolting to the Council to tell them about this meeting, are you?" a recently promoted Jedi Twi'lek murmured._

_Bastila's cobalt eyes sparkled indignantly and she somehow managed to hold her head higher. Sarii didn't feel the least bit sorry for her, even with the blush creeping into her cheeks. The sixteen-year-old Padawan had done that very thing at their first secret gathering after dark._

_"I am wise enough to respect the wisdom of the Masters," Bastila said flatly. "Rushing into war is a-"_

_"-a fool's venture, thank you, Master Vrook," another Padawan mocked, rolling his eyes._

_Sarii laughed softly with the rest of the Jedi._

"There were a few bounties out on the one you're talking about," Mira said wryly. "Sounds like someone could have collected on her easily."

"Now don't get me wrong," Onasi continued, "Bastila's an incredible woman. It was her Battle Meditation that destroyed the Star Forge. The Republic owes a lot of its victories to her-"

"Battle Meditation is becoming more and more common in Padawans nowadays," Sarii commented. The heat of the dock seemed overwhelming. She was sweating and she reached to loosen the collar of her clothing.

Onasi shrugged. "That's what she said when she offered to come along on this trip. She thought the bond she has with Katrina might help us in finding her. But I told her to stay in case the threat reached the Republic and they needed her abilities."

"A bond?" Mira repeated, brushing strands of her red hair out of her eyes. "If that's as good as a couple star maps, that'd be fine with me. As of right now I'd settle for a Zabrak shaman pointing west."

Onasi hefted the hyperdrive parts protectively in his arms, as if they made up a rather metallic child.

"I'm not really too eager to continue a slow drift through uncharted space either. We should work on finding those maps you mentioned, maybe the ones of the trade route-"

The Admiral trailed off as Atton approached. Sarii wished her pilot didn't look so guilty; slouching with his hands in his pockets and a guarded scowl on his face. She could already see Onasi's eyes narrowing as he compared the numbers before him with the numbers he had left behind.

"Looks like you found your parts," Atton offered, rubbing his neck and looking at Sarii although he was addressing the Admiral. A large bruise festered under the pale skin on his right cheekbone.

"Looks like you managed to get kicked out of another cantina," Mira observed.

"Where's Mical?" Sarii asked.

"Still in the cantina," Atton replied, gesturing back towards the bar.

"Where's Dustil?" Onasi added. "He was with you when I left."

"He was…but he disappeared."

The Admiral's gaze grew sharper until his eyes were two thin slits off-set by a frown. "Disappeared? Dustil doesn't just disappear."

Atton shrugged; that defensive hard look already in his eyes.

"Hey, he's a Jedi, right? Jedi are good at disappearing. We were asking around after your wife, and—"

"Did anyone say anything? Was she—no, no, wait," Onasi's momentary distraction by the mention of Revan didn't last long. He shook his head, lifting a hand to stop Atton before he could answer. "Later. Where's my son, Rand?"

"I said I don't know, Admiral. Asking me twenty times isn't going to change my answer," Atton replied icily.

"_You better watch yourself - I don't like being accused of something I didn't do," Atton Rand pointed a finger menacingly towards her, and Sarii actually leaned back despite the fact that he was still in the security cage. _

"_When I kill someone, trust me, you'll know. Got it?"_

Onasi opened his mouth to reply, but to Sarii's relief he was interrupted by Mical, who came jogging up the corridor to meet them.

Her Padawan looked disheveled. Most of it was his rumpled clothing and matted hair, but a large part of it was the giant black eye marring his otherwise calm expression.

"They've all been detained and imprisoned," he informed them. "There was an altercation between a group of mercenaries and Dustil interfered—"

_Sounds Jedi enough, I guess, _Sarii thought, trying to give Revan's Padawan the benefit of the doubt.

"They ushered him out of the cantina, presumably to beat him senseless. Atton and I followed and tried to disengage Jedi Dustil but he seemed…somewhat _invested_ in the fight."

Mical reached to brush his sweaty hair back on top of his head, frowning.

"Shortly before anything beyond a few fists could be used, the Danok port security forces showed up. They marched off with half the mercenaries and Jedi Dustil."

Mical's summarization was met with an assortment of facial expressions. Atton stared at the ground, turning his foot to scrape some imaginary dirt off his other boot. Sarii slowly reached back to tighten her ponytail, biting her lip.

The expression that worried her most was Onasi's—his glare, fixed on Atton, hadn't changed at all. Compared to Mical, the pilot was suspiciously unscathed beyond his bruise.

"Mercs? What kind of mercs?" Mira finally broke in. "Were they from around here, or Republic space? Are they bounty hunters?"

"One would assume bounty hunters if they were more interested in beating him up rather than shooting him on sight," Mical replied thoughtfully.

"I'm going to put these parts on my ship," Onasi broke in abruptly. His shoulders stiffened at the phrase 'shooting him on sight'. "Stay here. When I get back, we're going to find Dustil and then get the hell off of this rock."

"Yes sir, _Admiral_," Atton muttered after him mockingly. Either Onasi didn't hear, or he chose not to react. Sarii watched his brisk pace continue down the corridor until he was back near the blocks for distribution docking.

"They might be planning something," the pilot murmured quietly to her. "The other half of the mercs went straight to their ship, which was somewhere in the direction of the receiving ports, near the _Hawk_. They kept grumbling about how their captain was going to be pretty fracked off at having to give up credits to get his men out of jail. Then the one said they'd make up for it with the Jedi. Must mean the kid."

"Why didn't you tell Daddy over there that?" Mira said, tossing a hand up in the air. "You might have saved yourself some glowering-"

"Because I'd like to know just why the hell he finds me so offensive. And people don't tell you things like that when you're all polite and helpful-like," Atton snapped at the bounty hunter. He met Sarii's gaze, glaring stubbornly.

_The Admiral must know somehow…he must know Atton's past, _Mical suggested.

_That's the only explanation, I suppose, _Sarii agreed silently. The pilot raised an eyebrow and she fidgeted, uncomfortable even though he couldn't know what their conversation entailed.

_He must know what Atton did, _Sarii thought to herself. _What Atton is-_

_No, what Atton _was.

Still, she couldn't help wondering just how famous of a Sith assassin and conversion artist Atton Rand had been if members of the Republic Fleet knew of his reputation.

"Are you all right, Mical?" Her Padawan nodded, lifting his chin. The frown was still on his face as his gaze focused on the back of Atton's head.

"Physical injury is a small price to pay for possibly averting needless death-"

"Hell, Mical, why don't you go get yourself a statue bronzed or something?" Atton snapped, whirling on him. "Yeah, I stayed out of that fight and I'm not ashamed of it. I'm not getting thrown in jail _again_, definitely not for a fight I didn't start or some punk Admiral's son—"

"The local patrons of the cantina had little to say about Revan, in any case," Mical continued, ignoring the pilot. "She seems to have covered her tracks well. One wonders if the thought that someone would try to follow her had crossed her mind-"

"Later, Padawan," Sarii instructed curtly, straightening up as she noticed Onasi heading back towards them. His blaster was out of its holster and seemed like an extension of his hand rather than a weapon, with the way he swung his arm as he walked as if he wasn't holding anything at all.

"We should move quickly," she said to the Admiral. "Whatever happened between your son and the mercenaries might be enough that they're planning to retaliate. I think they might be docked in a receiving port, near the _Ebon Hawk_."

Sarii forced herself not to look at Atton; scrambling to come up with an alternate source for the information. But Onasi only nodded, apparently unconcerned with how she knew.

"Right. Let's go."

* * *

The Danok port security office was on the complete other side of the circular building. Two armored guards stood outside its mechanical door, dressed in dark brown uniforms with hard metallic-looking hats.

"I sure hope you have some bail credits, Admiral," Mira said. "We're kind of on the low side."

"I've got half a mind to leave him in there if he didn't start that fight for a damn good reason," Onasi grumbled, but Sarii sensed anxiety building under the gruff, no-nonsense demeanor he had adopted since returning from his ship.

She stepped towards the guard sitting behind the desk in the security office's entryway.

"Excuse me, we're looking for a young man who we think was arrested maybe an hour ago-"

The guard glanced up at her. He had a closely shaved head of blonde hair underneath his hat, and he gave Sarii a once-over before continuing.

"Wouldn't happen to be part of the cantina brawl, would he?"

"The ringleader," Atton called out. Sarii heard him stifle a yelp of pain as Mira kicked him in the ankle.

"Jail's empty," the guard replied. "Security forces brought in the crew of a docked ship, and their captain posted bail a while ago."

"There wasn't a younger one who wasn't dressed like the rest of them? He may have been carrying a lightsaber," Onasi murmured, obviously trying to sound careless.

"We confiscated that and all of their weapons, of course. They left the lightsaber behind when we returned their belongings to them, however. Said they didn't need it. I don't blame 'em. Some stupid new property master already sliced a finger off trying to handle it. Had to send him to the infirmary-"

"Right, the weapons are gone and so is the crew," Sarii continued far more patiently than she felt. "But what I want to know is-"

"There was one who looked different, but he left voluntarily along with the crew when their captain showed up, so we didn't question it."

The guard put his datapad down on the computer console, folding his arms and leaning over it towards them.

"Lemme guess. Your kid got sick of herding tateks and decided he was going to come up to the glamorous world of Danok and see the exotic exporters from all around the galaxy, maybe even join a crew-"

The guard's eyes went from Sarii to the Admiral, who stood next to her.

"You know, you farmers really ought to start keeping a handle on your kids," he began in a lecturing tone, "The only trouble I ever get in this jail is local kids coming down here for a drink, screwing around with the exporters, and starting fights. I'm getting damn sick of it-"

Sarii exchanged a glance with Onasi and realized that the guard thought they were Dustil's parents. Both involuntarily took a step away from each other.

"Listen, there's been a mistake," the Admiral said, moving in front of her. "You just let a bunch of mercs take my son off somewhere-"

"And what do you expect me to do about it? Your son went voluntarily, sir-"

"Well, a lot of choice he had with you taking his weapon away!" Onasi sputtered.

"_His _weapon?"

Sarii tried not to make too obvious a point of brushing back the side of her clothing to reveal her double lightsaber hanging from her side. Mical stepped up next to her to display his as well, although he couldn't be taken quite as seriously with the giant violet circle around his eye.

"Master Jedi," the guard finally said, his tone flat like he expected to be decapitated at any minute. His hair looked like it had turned blonder for a minute until Sarii realized that the change in color was because of the sweat now lining his hairline.

"I didn't know he was one of yours-"

"She's not going to hurt you, soldier. Calm down," the Admiral murmured in a low voice. The guard watched him skeptically, his hands gripping the edges of the computer console until his knuckles were white.

"First we need that lightsaber," Sarii began. The guard nodded and disappeared into the back of the holding cells. He returned a moment later holding the weapon between thumb and forefinger like it was a piece of bantha droppings. Mical reached out and took it.

"Second, we need to know where the crew of mercs or bounty hunters or whatever they are docked."

"Port authority transfers all docking information and ID's over to us so we can monitor the docks," the guard explained nervously, turning to the console in front of him. Sarii wondered that his hand wasn't going straight through it for how hard he was pressing the buttons.

"Receiving port fifteen. Class eighty freighter. Registered as the _Screamer_."

"I don't much like the sound of that," Onasi murmured. He nodded to the guard, turned on his heel and started moving back down the corridor. Sarii stared after him. Her mouth twisted into a frown.

_He asks me to find information on the Republic, then expects me to spend all my time helping his son ask questions about Revan and digging him out of the holes she's inevitably left behind—_

"Third, we need to know what the deal is with the Jedi," Mira said quickly, coming towards the desk. "Do they control Teren?"

_Good someone's remembering our priorities here, _Sarii thought. _I need _something _to send back to the Republic, besides the misadventures of Onasi and Son -_

"Wouldn't it be easier for you to ask the Jedi _with_ you?" the guard hissed towards Mira like she had just signed his death warrant.

"We would all appreciate your opinion," Mical prompted.

"The Jedi control the market on tateks. In that way they control the local economy. In that way, I suppose they do control Teren. I imagine they control most other planets in that way too," the guard said, moving through his explanation step by step, watching Sarii and Mical in case the next part would be a step too far.

"But every planet in our sector of space is self-governed, whether the Jedi are in power or the local government is in place."

The guard gained maybe a drop of confidence as he said this, lifting his head slightly from where it was lowered in deference to Sarii and her Padawan.

Onasi was becoming smaller and smaller as he moved down the hallway, and Sarii was going to lose sight of him soon.

_I'm not going to do this the entire trip, _she swore to herself. _I'm not going to compromise my responsibilities to the Order and the Republic to help him search for Revan and rescue her Padawan. Just this once and that's it._

"Thanks for your help," she tossed over her shoulder towards the guard, who looked so bewildered and exhausted by their frantic questioning that he half-slumped over the computer console as they began to walk at a fast pace back down the corridor to catch up with the Admiral.

The docks were much as they had left them; generally uneventful. The hum of announcements over audio systems, ships landing and taking off, and the sound of tools clinking against ship parts were occasionally pierced by the roar of a terentatek.

"Fifteen…it's over there," Onasi pointed with the barrel of his blaster, stopping so suddenly that Mira bumped into him.

The _Screamer _sat bulky and rusted in its dock. Two armored members of its crew, one human and a Twi'lek, stood guard outside.

"And how do we get onboard?" Mical murmured to no one in particular.

"First you find out if the thing has shields." Without any warning, Atton raised his arm and fired one shot towards the top of the ship. Sarii cringed along with everyone else, waiting for the loud shriek of the shields fluxing around the ship in response to the blaster fire; waiting for every dock worker to notice or a terentatek to get out of control.

Atton's shot hit the plating and disappeared into the hull without making anything bigger than a scorch mark. The two guards didn't even notice.

"Maybe it would be a good idea if you went to the _Hawk_ and got it ready for takeoff," Sarii said, frowning.

"I guess we should be thankful that the security forces around here aren't half as efficient as the TSF," Onasi muttered, continuing around the dock towards number fifteen.

"Oh, you mean those guys who arrested us, threw us in jail, and let our ship be stolen the minute we landed on Telos—"

"You know, Rand, I understand that the Republic's the good guys and everything, but even so I don't think it's the best idea to antagonize the leader of their Fleet," Mira snapped, yanking Atton out of the Admiral's line of fire and towards the _Ebon Hawk_, lying across the dock at number twelve. "Especially when said leader's got a pretty solid 'in' with a former Sith Lord."

Sarii stayed close to Onasi, Mical treading on her heels. She held her lightsaber in her hands, unextended but ready should she need it.

"Care to get rid of the guards?" the Admiral whispered, pausing around the wide outstretched wing of the ship.

Sarii eyed him in surprise as she complied. Her hand lifted, twitched, and the guards jogged around the corner of the ship in search of an imaginary mynock squealing against some power cables.

"You know a lot about the Force."

Onasi shrugged, lowering his blaster, glancing around, and taking a few furtive steps up the lowered gangplank.

"You don't live with two Jedi for eight years without learning how to use one."

The minute Sarii stepped into the _Screamer_, she was taken back to one of the unpleasantries of being in a war: having to give commands to camps of men who smelled worse than a bantha's backside. The freighter reeked like something or ten somethings had died on it and half the lighting flickered; either broken or waiting to be replaced. She and Mical extended their lightsabers to help them see.

She reached out for anything Force-sensitive, unused to having to look for Dustil Onasi and unsure as to how to look for him specifically. There was a strong presence coming from the back of the ship, and Sarii went towards it, crinkling up her nose and stepping over weapons, armor, provisions, and the general belongings of a crew of mercs.

The glow of the Force cage illuminated the otherwise littered cargo hold, full of empty containers and footlockers.

"You sure took your sweet time," Dustil Onasi said, pushing himself up from where he'd been leaning against the metal base of the cage.

The Admiral lowered his blaster, sighing in relief.

"Are you all right?"

"I'll be all right as soon as you get me out of this thing."

Dustil didn't look much worse for the wear, although the Jedi's clothing was ripped in several places, and a scrape over the side of his face was now dark red with dried blood.

"Revan was here," Dustil commented as he waited for his father and Mical to figure out the controls to the Force cage. "She stopped by the cantina and asked a lot of questions, none of which anyone can remember."

"I also managed to converse with a gentleman who saw Revan while she was on Teren," Mical added. "Apparently, he attempted to engage her in romantic dialogue."

Onasi's movements paused for the slightest moment and then he was back at the controls again. The Force cage disintegrated into nothing and Dustil Onasi stepped out, cracking his back.

"Exactly what was the origin of the dispute between the mercenaries that you got involved in, Dustil?" Mical murmured, handing the Jedi his lightsaber.

"They liked something I didn't want them liking," Dustil said curtly, avoiding his father's gaze.

"Oh no, don't even try and sneak this one by me. I _know_ that look," Onasi said sharply. "Did that something have blonde hair and grey eyes?"

"It might have," Dustil replied loftily.

"Damn it, we don't have time for this! If you're going to knock out every man who thinks Tova's pretty, you're going to be knocking out half the galaxy—"

"You know, Father, I seem to remember something between you and another officer when I was real little over Mom-"

"That…that was different. I was young and _stupid _then, kind of like you are now—"

Sarii found herself staring in dumb amazement for at least thirty seconds.

_We're standing in the middle of a ship called the _Screamer_ manned by a dozen or so mercenaries or bounty hunters who were in the market for a Jedi all because of a _girl?

"Gentlemen, can we kindly stop arguing about who fought over what and make a speedy exit from this ship?" Mical broke in curtly.

"In a minute," Dustil murmured, extending his lightsaber and peering around the corner in case any members of the _Screamer_'s crew were boarding their ship.

Sarii couldn't help but notice the blazing red of his blade, looking so harsh and unforgiving when compared against Mical's soft blue or her double violet.

Dustil wandered towards the front of the ship, dead ending in the wide cockpit, almost large enough to be called a bridge.

"I thought they were just mercs, but they're more like bounty hunters- _Jedi_ hunters, to be specific. When their captain showed up to post bail at the security office, he posted mine too. I guess I could have tried to fight them off, but I didn't want to put the port officers in danger, so I just let them take me. I figured you'd find me sooner or later."

"That's one hell of a risk, Dustil," Onasi said crossly, watching his son rifle through the computer consoles that lined the cockpit.

"Got it," Dustil announced, gesturing towards the screen. Sarii, Mical, and the Admiral crowded around to look.

"Their navigational charts cover the Outer Rim, but they only go straight to one other planet in the Unknown Regions. And that's this one," he said, pointing to a blinking dot on the small star map in front of them. "Remli Prime. I'm betting that's where they take all the Jedi they catch."

_Okay, they call themselves Jedi, they intimidate the entire sector by being the sole market for most economies, which gives them control over the local governments, they need terentateks for some reason, and there's a Jedi hunting trade going on to a planet called Remli Prime-_

"_Ebon Hawk_, we're returning to the ship," Mical said quietly into his comlink.

"You might want to get rid of the guards outside the _Screamer_ first," came Atton's drawling reply.

_Is there perhaps a way to render them unable to continue their hunt for Jedi? _Mical murmured to Sarii. _It is unjust to know what kind of threat they pose to the Order and to just let them continue-_

"But don't worry," Atton added. "I've got it covered."

"I feel safer already," the Admiral muttered under his breath.


	11. Chapter 10

"Are you certain of this, Padawan Marr?"

Visas listened carefully to the voice echoing against the marble pillars and wall-length windows of the Council chambers and determined that it belonged to Master Korr. Usually she could tell from whatever direction a sound came from, or from whatever bright light she saw through the Force pulsing or moving as it spoke.

This time, however, the voice sounded as thought it were all around her, and the bright lights sat in identical chairs surrounding where she stood in the middle of the room. Clearly every Master had thought the same seven words.

"There can be no doubt, Master Korr. The visions were detailed and complete. The child is receiving images of Jedi Revan from the Unknown Regions."

_The child _was _receiving images, at least_, Visas added to herself. In truth she had no way of knowing if the vision was an isolated incident or if they occurred with any kind of regularity. She had not seen Celyn Onasi since the little girl had broken out of the meditation in a cold sweat the night before and refused to leave, citing a fear of the long, dark walk back towards the other end of the Jedi Temple.

Visas had finally given up trying to get the child to continue seeking the vision (or at the very least return to the apprentice dormitories) and simply gone to sleep. When she had awoken, the little girl had disappeared.

"Bastila Shan has received no such visions," Korr continued. "She sent word from the Ilum enclave that neither she nor her Padawan have seen anything of Revan through the Force."

"That may be, Master Korr," Visas answered. "But I believe the bond between genetically similar sentients; indeed, one that has given life to another, is far stronger than even the most powerful of links between Master and Padawan."

The members of the Council nodded in agreement.

"And this vision…you say it included Revan disguising herself as a Sith?" Master Ahniuk, glowing with a pale pink light, murmured.

"Even as far as ocular drops and stimulant injections, Master Ahniuk."

"What's that kid gone off and done now?" she heard Jolee Bindo mutter to himself from the corner.

"But no images of whatever threat Jedi Revan may be facing? No information as to her whereabouts?"

Visas shook her head, and watched the bright glow of the Council fade into a muted green as each member contemplated a course of action, mentally debated it amongst their fellow Jedi, and then finally agreed. They turned back to her, slowly growing back to their usual shine of whites and bright blues.

"You must continue to interpret these visions, Padawan Marr," Korr said. "You must watch with the child and help her to catch the images Jedi Revan is consciously or unconsciously sending her."

"Tread lightly, Padawan," Bindo added quickly. "Don't push her too far. If Celyn's scared or uncomfortable, or the visions become graphic-"

"You cannot spare the child from the truth of her mother's past, Master Bindo," Ahniuk interrupted sharply.

"Some of this may be too intense for Celyn, Ahniuk," Bindo said, exasperated. "The girl's only five or six- she's never had any training; she barely even knows she _has_ the Force. Are we going to torment a child just to collect the tears?"

"Finding out what Revan has learned is key, Master Bindo. Especially if—"

The Council grew silent, but Visas could hear them no matter how quietly they whispered it in their minds:

_If Revan is consumed by it. If Revan does not return. If Revan dies fighting this Sith threat._

"You are dismissed, Padawan Marr. May the Force be with you."

Visas exited the Council chambers and continued towards the large marble staircases of the Temple, the ones that led to the lower level balconies, training rooms, and dormitories. The dormitories for the youngest apprentices; the ones recently separated from their families and just beginning their training, was located down a hall populated with quarters for residing Masters. It was as if they wanted to be close by to protect the Order's most precious resource since the assassinations had begun and ended.

Visas concentrated on that bright white glow she had seen underneath her workbench, trying to find Celyn Onasi. Her efforts made a long white line curl out from one of the larger training rooms and fall at her feet; the Force showing her a path to the daughter of Revan and Admiral Onasi.

The child sat in the sunlight that pored through the windows of the room. The outline of her figure came to Visas first in shapes and then in defined edges. Her head looked particularly lumpy and the Miraluka surmised that it was the child's hair, mussed and matted up against her head. Visas wondered if she had brushed it at all since rolling out of whatever bed she had been given in the apprentice dormitories.

Next to her sat another child apprentice, a girl with her legs crossed and her eyes squinted shut. A datapad wobbled a few centimeters off the ground in front of the pair, and Celyn leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and her hands on her chin.

"You have to have the Force," the apprentice said.

"I _do_ have the Force," Celyn Onasi replied defensively. Visas watched the child bite her lip and poke the datapad with one finger. It shook a little but righted itself.

"Dustil does stuff like that sometimes," Revan's daughter offered, smiling to herself. "He holds things above my head so I can't reach them, or makes them chase me—"

The child stopped, noticing Visas standing in the doorway.

"Go away," Celyn muttered, snatching the datapad out of the air and inspecting it as if to try and discover the secret of making it float. The young apprentice sitting next to her looked uncomfortable hearing the little girl's hostility towards the Miraluka.

Visas walked down the few steps into the room, her robes sliding across the marble floor until she was standing over the two children. The apprentice sat up straighter in an effort to impress her. Visas gave the child a reassuring smile.

"The Force has chosen to work through you, Celyn," the Miraluka said firmly. "The Jedi Council needs your help-"

"No. I don't want to do it anymore."

"Don't you want to see your mother?" Visas appealed. Celyn Onasi looked up and gave her a withering stare.

"I don't want to see Mommy like _that_," she said, beginning loudly and trailing off into a whisper. "It's scary."

"There's no need to be afraid. I'll help you-"

"Father doesn't think you should believe Jedi," the little girl interrupted, turning the datapad over in her hands. "Father thinks they lie to get people to do what they want. Father wishes he didn't have to leave me here because he doesn't like Jedi."

The child apprentice looked mortified, and she sat perfectly still with her legs crossed, staring at Celyn Onasi as if she had sprouted a second head.

Visas frowned, gazing at the little girl. Celyn gave no reaction as to whether she felt the Miraluka's stare or not. She continued to poke at the corners and lines of the datapad, tilting her head from side to side.

When she started to hum an off-key tune to herself, Visas turned and left the room. It wasn't five seconds after she had rounded the corner that she heard the clapping of quick footsteps racing to catch up to her; the glow of a white light in the back of her vision coming closer. She turned around.

Celyn Onasi stopped in front of her. Her brown eyes were hesitant and she stared up at the Miraluka.

"Father thinks that in his head, but Mommy's a Jedi and Dustil's a Jedi and he loves them," she said softly, and Visas could feel the child's conflict between wanting to emulate her father and the illogical nature of his feelings.

"I miss Mommy," the little girl finally said in a big sigh. "Why is she doing that? Why does she look scary?"

"I do not know, Celyn," Visas murmured. "But if we look, we may discover the answer together."

Celyn bit her lip, still doubtful.

"You'll be with me the whole time?"

"The whole time," Visas repeated. The child straightened up. She heaved her shoulders in one deep breath and nodded her head.

Visas led the little girl down the hallway towards one of the empty meditation rooms; small and sparse, usually used for Master and Padawan exercises.

"Tova came to see me today," Celyn murmured. "To make sure I was okay. She's Dustil's girlfriend."

"Revan has apparently passed down her interpretation of the Jedi Code to her Padawan," Visas commented. The little girl wrinkled up her nose.

"What's the Jedi Code?"

For a moment, Visas considered explaining to the child but decided it would take too long. _And she would probably not welcome the knowledge that her mere existence defies the Order's most basic tenets._

"I like Tova," Celyn continued, apparently unconcerned with whether Visas wanted to hear or not. "She's really smart. She's on holovids a lot. She figured out Mommy's real name all by herself."

"And this…companion of Dustil's…she is not displeased that his Master is Revan?" Visas said, surprised.

"She doesn't tell Dustil she knows," the child added. "Tova's afraid he'll only be nice to her because she knows and not because he loves her. She's mad at him sometimes because he didn't tell her."

The Miraluka seated herself on one of the flat cushions that sat in the center of the room. Celyn followed, her eyes roaming around the room's dim lighting and muted colors.

"What you taught me helped," she informed Visas. "I could choose if I wanted them to see what I was thinking or not. I let one of the other kids see Father and he said that before he wanted to be a Jedi he wanted to be Carth Onasi. At school on Telos, a lot of the boys wanted to be him too."

The little girl smirked, obviously proud of herself that she had such a famous father.

"Enough now," Visas instructed. "Close your eyes."

Celyn did so, falling silent.

"Think of your mother."

Visas saw nothing but the Admiral for a moment, and then Revan finally began to wander into the child's thoughts.

She felt the child grasping for what pictures of Revan came to her, as though squeezing the life out of them might give her what she sought. Despite her earlier reluctance, the little girl obviously longed very badly to see new images besides the ones that replayed over and over in her memories. She reached hungrily, desperately-

_Visas pleaded with words she could not remember to the man standing over her on the dead surface of Katarr. To connect with her, to let her see him._

_The man laughed. No- that was not the word. She heard no laughter, she heard nothing but her own breathing. But that was what she felt through the Force, his mockery and his derision. She felt her face growing red and hot._

_Suddenly the image came easily, as if it had always been there for her to pick up at her leisure. Visas grabbed at it violently._

_He was all in black; towering over her wasted and beaten body, his boots standing in between the other bodies around her. His toes barely touched the hand of one of the corpses._

_She felt as though he never ended, as though he was taller than the highest spires on Katarr, higher than the mountains off in the distance. She wondered for a moment if they too were flattened and diminished, like the wilted flowers or the toppled trees or the crushed bodies of her people. A part of the dry cracked earth, the infertile soil, even as their bodies were still intact._

_And his face…his face was two gaping sores which were surrounded by a smooth mask of pure white. It blinded her, the painful whiteness of that mask; covering the dark, shapeless forms of the bodies, the black void of Katarr-_

"It's different now," Celyn Onasi whispered. "She looks scary again."

Visas could hear every tremor in the girl's breathing, every miniscule shift in her position. Her aura was timid and dim, flickering before Visas as she reached out to touch the child's hand.

She waded through images of Revan smiling, Revan laughing, and found Revan with a droid.

_Katrina turned to the droid, who showed no reaction to her changed appearance._

_"Ready for your memory wipe, HK?"_

_"Assurance: Intending no offense, Master, but anything that will get the insipid sweet nothings of your husband and offspring out of my main memory core."_

_Katrina smirked, taking the fresh memory unit from T3 at her side._

_"It's good to have you back, HK."_

_"Reciprocation: It is, in all honesty, good to be back, Master."_

_The droid twitched for a moment after she installed the core, closing up his access panel._

_"Ready for another day?" she murmured._

_"Answer: Indeed, Lord Revan."_

_This, too, was done every morning. HK's memories from the previous day were transferred to his secondary memory core, along with all his other non-essential memories. Then the core was taken out and given to T3 for safekeeping while the assault droid was refitted with a fresh one. _

_He was left only with the instructions from his master to independently gather information. The transfer of memory sometimes made this order hard to carry out, as the droid had no way of knowing what he had already seen and recorded for her, and sometimes entire days were wasted when he would bring her nothing of value or almost get her in trouble because of his wanderings._

_She headed towards the gangplank of the ship that she refused to name. There was no reason to name it- she never wanted to see it again after this. Besides, she hadn't picked it out, he-_

No. Not yet.

_She frowned. She had begun early today. It was not a good sign._

_T3 rolled up against the back of her knee._

_"Dammit, T3, do I have to shut you down again?" she snapped._

_The little droid had been trying to follow her every day since she landed here. He did not respond to direct orders from her; so far, the closest he had gotten was the main entrance before she had caught him and hurried him back onto the ship. Finally she had fitted him with a restraining bolt; she didn't have time to sit around and figure out just how his independent nature was overriding basic commands from master to droid._

_Even this didn't stop the utility droid from rolling after her every morning, even if the restraining bolt kicked in and left him locked up and shut down on the middle of the gangplank._

_T3 jumped back, letting out a startled series of beeps before retreating back onto the ship. Katrina continued off of the ship, HK at her side-_

"I don't understand," the little girl forced through gritted teeth. "That _can't_ be what Mommy's doing. She's dressed like the Sith-"

"We cannot understand unless we watch more," Visas tried to keep her voice calm, despite being frustrated and anxious to understand too.

"She did bad things when she looked like that," Celyn muttered, but closed her eyes again obediently.

_The sky was dark brown, as if the planet was somehow flipped and the earth was up. Underneath her feet was the glossy black rock, smooth as glass that made up the walls, ceilings, and floors of the building._

You are early this morning, Lord Revan.

I tire of sleep, Lord Sila.

_Everyone talked through the Force here. She could recall speaking maybe ten words total out loud since she had arrived. T3 and HK always paid the price when she returned at the end of the day- she talked their auditory units off._

_To her surprise, most of them were human. Only a few were a couple generations removed from true Sith. _

_Like Sila, the only one waiting for her this morning. His dark red skin caught the low lighting in the sanctuary, reflecting off his protruding cheekbones and long, sharply tapered chin._

Perhaps you are also eager, as I am, to see a month's work come to fruition today.

_She glanced over at the center of the room, where the Force-sensitive man stood wavering under the cool breath of the ventilation system._

_She and Sila stepped towards him. The man made no attempt to run or fight them. Katrina had learned quickly that the easiest form of control was physical; if true Sith wanted you to run, you ran whether your brain sent commands to your legs or not. And if they did not, you stood frozen in whatever moment of fear you had been caught in._

_The man had once been a red-head with a short beard. Now his hair was steel gray, his skin clammy. Much as the dark side tried, however, it could not put wrinkles into his fairly youthful skin. He was around the same age as her former-_

No, _she clamped down on her thoughts firmly. _Not yet.

_Sila watched her, the hard tiny lumps on the top of his bald head shiny and lined with cracks and imperfections. They were the last signs of cranial horns that evolution had filed away._

_Katrina didn't bother to lift her hand. She closed her eyes behind the cool, slick surface of her mask and concentrated. She only opened them again to watch the lightning, zig-zagging down from the air above the Force-sensitive man to stab him at all sides, winding like vines around his arms and legs-_

Celyn Onasi jumped. Visas watched the little girl's white glow suddenly flare up into yellow and green before gently fading back into that guarded flicker.

The child closed her eyes and said nothing. Apparently she had seen Revan using Force lightning before.

You may attempt further inspection, apprentice, _Sila informed her._

_They called her Lord out of respect for what she had done for them, but officially she was only an apprentice._

Ironic, eh Malak?

_Thoughts of Malak were allowed. He was part of her old life, her life as a Sith, and thinking of him or the Star Forge or her days as Jedi Revan during the Mandalorian Wars were allowed._

You seem to have a connection, _Sila added conversationally. _He reacts well to your stimuli.

_That was because of his life, his memories. In them was a child, a-_

No. Not yet.

_Thoughts like that, of anything beyond those last moments on the bridge of her command ship, beyond Malak firing on her, were not allowed. The true Sith saw everything; the normal methods of Jedi mind blocks and control were like tissue paper against a charging desert wraid._

_Katrina stepped forward, closing her eyes and slightly tilting her head._

_The first things they had taught her were, of course, offensive. Ways of manipulating, of changing things, breaking down walls and barriers, seeing what she wasn't meant to see._

_She easily moved past the Force sensitive's tattered mind blocks- they had been unpredictable but now they were weak. The non-Jedi were always harder because of their lack of control, which was why he had held on for an entire month._

_Feeling his pain and his rage wash over her though, Katrina knew that he had run out of days._

_She was glad for a moment that she wore a mask so he could not see her eyes. She suspected the way she looked might have terrified him more. Most Sith walked around with their sunken eyes and peeling skin hanging out for everyone to see. Her mask was something of a tolerated oddity._

_But there was no way she could do this if she had to look someone in the eye, if they could see her face, no matter how disguised._

Good, _Sila commented. She had an idea of what his voice would sound like if she ever got to hear him speak; it would be slightly accented like he was nobility, but rough like it rolled over gravel every time the words passed through his throat. _

_But when she succeeded in the tasks they set before her, they taught her defensive lessons as well. Ways to resist their controls, methods of crawling out of the mental quick sands they could put people in._

_And the more she learned about how to defend against their methods, the quicker she could figure out how to stop them. The quicker she figured that out, the sooner she could go home-_

No. Almost, but not yet.

_The man shrieked in tones she didn't know men had. He fell to his knees in the middle of the room, pounding his fists into the flooring until his knuckles bled-_

Visas's concentration broke as Celyn Onasi scrambled up from where she had been sitting on the floor, so startled that she stumbled backwards into the wall.

"Why is she doing that?" the child demanded, her chin trembling.

The Council would have to be notified immediately. Revan's methods were more dangerous than she realized-

"_Why _is she doing that?" Celyn shouted when Visas gave no answer.

Visas suddenly felt overwhelmed by one blinding need: Father. Or Dustil. Or both.

"She's hurting people-"

"Your mother is only pretending to be a Sith-" the Miraluka tried to explain.

"That's _rich_," Celyn shot back, obviously another imitation.

"Enough," Visas replied sharply. "You're only noticing her changed appearance, her different clothes. You're only seeing how she looks and assuming that because she looks terrible to your eyes, she is terrible."

She sighed heavily.

"Things are not always as they appear."

_The man wrenched her up by her chin. The man with no eyes, like her, blind to the galaxy. Visas clung desperately to him, her young face trembling as she stayed on her knees._

_Somehow she knew that it would be wrong to rise to his level, to stand above the bodies of her people with him. Somehow she knew that she should bow before him._

_"My life is yours," she answered, the ancient pledge when one lost their sight and was reconnected with it._

_Her life was of little value to him. Somehow she knew this._

_But somehow she knew she would call him Master anyways._


	12. Chapter 11

"_Call it what you will, Sarii, but his method did allow you to leave the bounty hunters' ship, as well as escape the planet without a terentatek on board," Master Kavar noted. He stood in the doorway of the _Ebon Hawk_'s communication room, his hands clasped behind him._

_Sarii breathed deeply and watched him from where she sat cross-legged on the floor, her wrists resting against her knees. She was sorely in need of meditation. Especially following Atton's "handling" of the situation._

_Her former Master gestured with his head towards the cockpit. Sarii pushed herself up from the floor and obediently followed._

_It wasn't so much the method that bothered Sarii. It was something she couldn't put her finger on, something that wasn't quite right and wasn't quite wrong about how Atton Rand had fixed everything. Something small, some detail that she was missing that she was sure to figure out later when it didn't matter anymore—_

_Rounding the corner from the _Hawk_'s communication room didn't lead her to the cockpit as she had expected, but rather into the expansive, sunlit Jedi Temple._ _Sarii followed Kavar down the hall, towards the Council chambers. She could remember entering this room a hundred times over; meekly following her Master, proudly participating in her Knighthood ceremony and then standing before the Council's grim faces as it was taken away._

_"Many of the emotions the Jedi guard against have been at their strongest here, in the heart of our order," Kavar murmured, glancing over his shoulder at her as he manipulated the door controls that were not really there with hands that he didn't really have._

You're right about that, _Sarii thought to herself, nodding. On the day she was cast out, her own anger, outrage, and self-loathing hadn't been enough to block the feelings of the Council from her. Kavar's disappointment had left scars that would never go away. And Atris; with her icy cool stare and the perfect fold of her white robes acting like she was almost happy to exile her. Atris, the Padawan-less Master, finally able to instruct someone on where and how they had failed._

_"You understand why she never had a Padawan, Sarii. You were her intended choice just as you were also mine. But the Council felt I would be able to instruct you better."_

_Master Kavar smirked for a moment, folding his arms in the sleeves of his brown robes, his short light brown hair turning lighter in the Coruscanti sunlight that shone through the windows._

_"Force, but that woman could argue."_

_Sarii politely looked away. She remembered Atris as a part of her Master's thoughts and feelings that she had been blocked from many times as a young Padawan. She wouldn't intrude on them now when he was dead either._

_That hadn't stopped her speculation, however, based on the way she remembered seeing them together often as an apprentice, the smiles they had exchanged then as if remembering things that would never happen again. Not to mention the disagreements she sometimes interrupted as a Padawan; which usually ended in Atris storming off and Kavar shaking his head. Discussing the personal lives of the Masters was a traditional pastime among students at the Jedi Temple, but to ask a Master about what had happened before you became their Padawan earned you a response like you were asking a fish what had happened before it learned to swim._

_"But come, Padawan," Kavar continued, stepping across the threshold into what should have been the Council chambers but what was instead the receiving docks of the Danok port on Teren. "Let us see exactly what bothers you about your escape."_

* * *

She could still see the legs of the two guards at the bottom of the _Screamer_'s gangplank, wavering as the men shifted their weight. 

"I hope Rand meant within the next ten minutes," Dustil Onasi commented behind her.

Sarii considered her options—she couldn't distract them as she had before; the only place she could throw a sound while trapped on the ship was, well, somewhere else on the ship.

The familiar shrieking roar of a terentatek echoed up the _Screamer_'s opened gangplank. It died down into the low murmur of men, and Sarii leaned her head down to listen.

"…that thing smells like it's been around this place too long," one of the guards chuckled.

_You haven't got much room to be commenting on bad smells_, Sarii thought, breathing carefully through her mouth to avoid the locker room scent of the _Screamer_.

"Look, I don't care for your off-worlder, exporter smart mouth quips—"

Sarii recognized the voice of the gruff tatek handler that had met them when they'd first landed. The terentatek sounded louder now, letting out a harsh, high snort that almost sounded like a whinny.

"And we don't care for your beast breathing on our ship," one of the guards said sharply. "Get that mutated rancor-spawn out of our faces—"

The terentatek roared louder as though it were offended. Sarii felt the ship vibrate slightly.

_"It seems as though the guards might have provided their own means for your escape had your pilot allowed them to simply continue talking," Kavar commented, leaning over her shoulder to stare down the gangplank of the _Screamer.

"Stop waving that blaster rifle around. You're upsetting it. How am I supposed to load it onto your ship if you keep—"

"For the last time, old man, I don't know what the hell you're talking about. We never heard of a ship called the _Ebon Hawk_, we never agreed for a transfer of cargo—"

The ship rocked violently, and Sarii saw the legs of the guards get a lot shorter as the two either moved out of the way of the angered terentatek or were knocked off their feet.

The muffled yells of dock workers and handlers were almost as loud as the enraged snorting and growling of the terentatek.

"If you're going to go—" Atton's voice broke in on Mical's comlink. Her Padawan was so startled he almost dropped it. "—you'd better go now."

Sarii quickly scurried down the gangplank, followed closely by Mical and the two Onasi men.

The dock was quickly turning into pandemonium. The two guards who had been guarding the _Screamer_ were backed into a corner by the angered terentatek; their blaster rifles raised and pointed towards the beast. It made large swings with its claws into piles of cargo, flinging them around four or five frantic handlers trying to surround the out-of-control beast.

_"Hmm. Clumsy, yet effective. Inelegant, perhaps. Is that your objection, Sarii?" Kavar said, his arms still folded in front of him as he watched the dock grow louder and more hectic._

Sarii, Mical, and the two Onasis hurried across the dock towards the _Ebon Hawk_. Atton Rand glanced up casually as they entered the cockpit.

"What did you do?" Sarii said, breathless.

She watched him chuckle to himself, folding his arms and shaking his head as he watched the terentatek through the cockpit windows. It had moved on to the bounty hunters' ship, tearing whole panels apart, ripping one of its landing posts off and hurling it across the dock.

"The _Screamer _took on a little unexpected cargo, courtesy of an imaginary transfer between myself and her captain. There you go. They won't be doing anymore Jedi hunting. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"

_"Ah, but this was not your desire, Sarii," Kavar said, seating himself in the co-pilot's chair. "It was your Padawan's."_

Is there perhaps a way to render them unable to continue their hunt for Jedi?_ Mical had murmured to Sarii. Now his words replayed in her head as if her deceased Jedi Master had made a recording for posterity._ It is unjust to know what kind of threat they pose to the Order and to just let them continue-

"Preferably with minimal carnage, but hey, whatever works," Dustil murmured dryly.

Sarii couldn't manage to stop her laughter quickly enough and it came out as a garbled snort. Atton glared over his shoulder at her and she averted her eyes to the younger Onasi, who didn't seem to mind her laughter as much.

He had a grin like his father, who exhaled loudly before replacing his blaster into its holster.

"We should probably get out of here fast before they start asking questions. Give them those coordinates, Dustil."

The Admiral turned to leave, presumably to hurry back to his ship and make his repairs.

"And try not to get yourself into another fight or thrown in jail on your way back either," Onasi called over his shoulder to his son, who rolled his eyes.

"Next thing you know he'll start giving me a curfew," Dustil muttered, handing the datapad over to Atton, who eyed it suspiciously before beginning to punch the coordinates into the navicomputer.

"Dustil..." Mical began, straightening his clothing. "Does it concern you in the least that this 'Tova', the woman who was the source of contention between yourself and the crew of the _Screamer;_ does it not trouble you that your romantic attachment to her is against the rules of the Order?"

The Telosian cocked an eyebrow at Mical like he was suggesting Selkath preferred an arid climate.

"No."

"Familial attachment is discouraged among the Jedi, Dustil. That is why apprentices are taken from their families at an early age. I can certainly understand that you cannot help but be in close contact with your father, given his position in the Fleet, but romantic attachments are even more dangerous. They court anger, hostility, and jealousy- much as you exhibited today—"

"Believe me, I've had enough lectures on the dangers of the dark side to last me a lifetime, Mical. My Master's a walking case study."

"I'm glad somebody else thinks so," Sarii said.

Dustil glanced up at her, meeting her gaze. "You don't know the half of it," he added quietly.

The loud smack of the datapad against Dustil's side broke their stare. Atton's mouth was a thin line across his clenched jaw, like his tongue was fighting a duel against whatever words he wanted to say. He jabbed the datapad up towards the Jedi, hitting his lightsaber in the process.

Sarii cleared her throat and turned away, heading back towards the crew quarters. Mical followed.

_The ideals of the Order don't seem to mean as much as they used to, _her Padawan thought resignedly.

_Don't take Revan and her Padawan as examples, Mical, _Sarii answered. _Revan was reckless and headstrong even as a Jedi. They're the exception, not the norm._

_I sometimes wonder if we _are _the norm, Sarii, _Mical continued. _We fight to protect ideals that we are forbidden to enjoy, such as peace, family…love._

His face got a little red as he realized what impression the use of her first name and the inflection on 'love' had made.

Sarii tried to remain calmly oblivious to his flustered demeanor.

_"Difficult, isn't it?" Kavar said, smiling. He had by no means been the only one to ever have a Padawan crushing on him. It was a normal occurrence with the younger Masters. Sarii wondered momentarily if any poor, desperate Padawan had ever had a crush on Master Vrook in his younger days. The thought made her laugh out loud._

She grasped for her lightsaber to unhook it from her belt and realized she had never put it back on— she had left it lying in the cockpit. Sarii waved Mical on towards the crew quarters and turned back to go get it.

The racket of the terentatek and the dock outside could still be faintly heard even in the confines of the ship. The sharp echo of a man's voice rang off the _Hawk_'s dented metal walls, too clear to have come from outside.

"...what are you trying to say?"

"I'm not trying. I'm saying. Back off."

Sarii slowed her pace, peering around the corner to where Dustil and Atton stood in the cockpit across from each other. Through the windows behind them she could see the terentatek calming down, the handlers pushing it towards a cage; the _Screamer _half slumped on its side, immobile and useless.

"You must be joking," she heard Dustil sputter. "I mean…come on, I was watching kid holovids when she was fighting in a war!"

"Age difference doesn't seem to be stopping your old man."

"I'm not my father."

The young Jedi Knight shuddered.

"Not like _that_, anyways."

_Not again…first Mical, then Master Kavar…is he going to threaten every male Jedi we meet? _Sarii glanced over her shoulder for a minute towards the _Ebon Hawk_'s crew quarters, making sure no one else would notice her eavesdropping.

Parts of her hated the tone in Atton's voice. He sounded like a bully or some ignorant cantina bum with too much juma in him.

Other parts of her were vaguely flattered, and guiltily wanted to know how far he would go. Those parts kept her crouched around the corner, concentrating on keeping her presence hidden from Dustil Onasi, a Jedi; and Atton Rand, who was usually suspiciously perceptive.

_Kavar walked in a slow circle around the two men, nodding to himself._

_"These two have more in common than you let yourself see, Padawan," he informed her._

_"They're both angry," Sarii answered readily. "They've both followed Revan—"_

_"Exploring their histories is commendable, Padawan, but I was speaking more generally. For one example, they both have brown hair," he added, looking pointedly at her like that was supposed to explain it._

The younger Onasi's obvious discomfort didn't seem to deter Atton. Sarii could sense his hostility a kilometer away. Most of it wasn't directed at Dustil, though he seemed to be the unfortunate punching bag Atton had found today.

"Look, didn't you hear Mical's little lecture? I've _got_ a girlfr—" the Jedi Knight trailed off.

Atton's irritation focused and shifted, swirling before her eyes. The pilot was unguarded for the briefest of moments. Struggling to seize the advantage, Sarii tried to paw through his normally concealed thoughts. But all she could sense was that he was trying to get hold of something out of Dustil-

"I don't have time for this. I'm going back to the _Chaser,_" Dustil snapped, turning around to leave. Sarii tensed, ready to duck inside the communications room and make it look like she hadn't been listening.

"You killed her cause you loved her too, huh?"

The Telosian stopped dead in his tracks.

"What?"

Atton glared at the young Jedi Knight.

"You heard me. What was her name? Celyn? Nope, that's someone else. Sel…Selene."

"_I _didn't kill her-" Dustil began, catching himself and gritting his teeth.

He wasn't as open as a good Jedi would be with their feelings, but Sarii could still read him a hell of a lot easier than she had ever been able to read Atton. Dustil's anger was tight and focused. He wasn't allowing it to control him, but he wasn't stifling it either.

Sarii hesitated, wondering if she should interfere.

But those same parts that had been flattered at Atton's jealousy and overprotective-ness flared up like sentient parasites and kept her standing exactly where she was, waiting with bated breath to see what the two men would do next.

"Right. Keep telling yourself that. You know what, kid?" the pilot sneered, folding his arms. "I know when someone's got something to hide, and you and your old man have so many secrets you're dripping with 'em. I don't care if your father's one of the top Admirals in the Fleet. You can't hide behind Daddy around me, kid-"

Sarii jumped when Dustil Onasi lifted a hand and effortlessly clenched his fist. Atton's face grew pale but he stubbornly held his position.

_He's a Jedi, what is he doing-_

_I'm a Jedi, I should be stopping this-_

"I had a feeling you'd understand this language better."

Dustil's voice changed. It was icy enough to make Sarii shiver where she hid behind the bulkhead; foreboding enough to make her still hold herself, waiting to hear more.

"Pazaak cards…hyperspace routes…," the younger Onasi continued softly. "Basic methods. We learned those in the Academy real early if we hadn't already figured them out ourselves."

Sarii put a hand up to her mouth even though she was controlled enough not to visibly react.

_The Admiral's son is a former Sith? What the hell else aren't they telling us?_

Atton let out a choked breath, but still didn't unfold his arms.

"Try that again, and I'll show you how Sith deal with people who try and get into their heads. Real Sith, not wannabe Hutt-spawn like you."

The young Jedi Knight's hand dropped, and Atton bent over, hacking and putting a hand to his throat, glaring up at the Jedi.

"Your father know about this?" he wheezed.

Dustil glanced over his shoulder.

"My father got me out of it. Try anything on him and falling back to the dark side would be worth it for what I'd do to you."

The Telosian turned his back on the pilot, heading down the corridor. Sarii ducked around the corner of the communications room, holding her breath and staying perfectly still until the familiar clanking of footsteps on the gangplank faded away into the hum of the ship.

* * *

_"You practically answer your question yourself, Sarii," Kavar finished, watching the younger Onasi leave. "Your pilot's efforts, however destructive, still allowed for your escape. Perhaps the better question to ask is this: how did your pilot know your Padawan's desire to stop the crew of the _Screamer _from continuing their Jedi hunt?"_

"_What you're implying…isn't probable, Master," Sarii replied. _

_She watched Atton cough for a moment or so, trying to shake off the after-effects of the Force choke. He began powering up the ship, making the necessary announcement to the port authority, backing the _Ebon Hawk _out of the Danok port and breaking out of Teren's atmosphere back into the darkness of space._

_"He spent a good part of his life torturing Force sensitives," Sarii finally explained. "He despises Jedi. If it looks like he's using the Force, it's probably just because he understands how to manipulate it better than people who _do _have it—"_

_Kavar clasped his hands behind his back, meandering from the cockpit to the communications room where Sarii sat meditating._

_"All he does is shut people out, Master. Force sensitives with no training can't do that," she replied. Her back was beginning to ache, a sign that the actual time that she had been sitting here meditating was a lot longer than her visions made it seem._

_"How is he aware that there is anything that needs to be shut out in the first place? Occasionally, Sarii, a cigarra is just a cigarra. Evidence that the Force is at work is usually just the Force at—"_

The sound of the _Ebon Hawk_'s alert system distracted Sarii, and she pushed herself up from the floor of the communications room. Kavar had vanished from where he had last been standing in the doorway, and the _Hawk _hummed around her steadily, lost in the throes of hyperspace.

Admiral Onasi's figure shimmered to life before her eyes, and Sarii straightened up in front of the holographic projector, trying not to look like she had just been jostled out of a conversation with a dead Jedi Master.

"Admiral," she murmured in greeting. "Was there something you needed?"

"No. We're en route to Remli Prime and the ship's running smoothly. Made the hyperspace jump without any problems."

His voice was slightly static-y over the parsec or so that separated the _Hawk _and the _Chaser_.

"Master Jedi, I think it's fair that I tell you something," Onasi began calmly. "In fact, I probably should have told you before you even left Telos, but I guess it just hadn't struck me as a top priority until now."

_Maybe that your son knows how to do a Force choke unusually well?_

Sarii nodded, watching his wavering form expectantly.

"It concerns a member of your crew- your pilot, Atton Rand."

Immediately Sarii glanced around, making sure Atton wasn't in earshot. Her mind searched for him.

_Seven to ten, plus minus two—_

_Pazaak, _Sarii thought irritably. _Can't he shut me out with something else? At least for variety's sake—_

"The records the Republic provided on your crew were pretty spotty, but I suppose that's understandable considering—"

"You were giving us background checks?" Sarii interrupted, raising an eyebrow at him.

Onasi didn't look at all apologetic.

"I've got…certain liabilities, Sarii," he said in a low voice. Sarii wondered why; if it was just out of habit or if his son was around and the Admiral didn't want him hearing. "I can't exactly tell just anyone about her."

'_Course not. You're afraid the Republic will find out, haul Revan off to answer for her crimes, you'll lose your precious Beautiful, your Sith Lord of a wife—_

Sarii's hand moved to her throat, making it appear like she was massaging it. In reality she put a small amount of pressure on her windpipe, enough to kill her train of thought.

"You've got an exemplary service record in the Mandalorian Wars, and of course I know Mical pretty well," Onasi continued, clearing his throat. His holographic form tilted its head downwards, as if he were consulting a datapad. "He served the Republic during the assassinations, helped us kind of keep an eye on the Jedi and do what we could from the sidelines. Nothing came up about Mira, but a couple contacts I have say she's an unusually good-hearted bounty hunter."

The Admiral's voice grew sharper. "But your pilot's got-" his tone was almost accusatory. "-a definite history."

Sarii sat up, already feeling uncomfortable, as if she was talking about Atton behind his back. She had a distinct feeling that the pilot wouldn't react very well to that if it ever happened.

"I know, Admiral," she said carefully, quietly. Onasi reached forward, adjusting the audio like he couldn't hear her. "He started out in the Republic Fleet, like you—"

"Ensign Jaq Rand, crack pilot of Green squadron, registered as a _Leviathan _crew member."

Onasi's voice went through wavering degrees of tightness; loose and condescending as he said 'ensign', soft and rueful when 'crack pilot' followed, harsh and rough when he reached '_Leviathan_'.

_Explains where he learned to fly, I guess, _Sarii thought to herself. _Or kind of learned to fly, considering the number of times we've crashed._

"Of course that may not be accurate. When the numbers of deserters started piling up and official record keepers couldn't keep count during the war, they just kind of started assigning officers to the major commanders who defected to follow the Sith."

_Revan, _Sarii corrected silently. _Not the Sith, Revan._

"You know, I take it, that he was a deserter?" Onasi added, as if prodding her for some kind of negative response.

"Yes, I knew. He told me," Sarii replied evenly, trying not to put as much emphasis as she wanted to on 'told'.

"Official duty reports on him say he was just a kid with a smart mouth who wouldn't go any further than maybe Lieutenant— and only that _if_ he got his act together. Apparently he got it together for the Sith, because Republic files on him indicate that he commanded at least a squadron-sized group of specially trained soldiers. The record is pretty much speculation, but the evidence suggests that these soldiers were responsible for a number of Jedi deaths."

"_People say killing Jedi is hard," Atton continued casually, resting one arm against the side of the alley and the other on his hip. "It's not; you just have to be smart about it."_

_Sarii stared back at him, unable to make her mouth move even if she wanted to, even if she could have thought of something to say to that. When she gave no verbal reaction, he went on to elaborate._

"I _know_, Admiral," Sarii replied testily. "He told me that too."

Onasi frowned at her tone, narrowing eyes that she knew were brown at her, though they appeared light teal through the holographic projector just like the rest of him.

"I am not trying to provoke you, Master Jedi. I'm just trying to warn you about what you might have on your hands—"

"What I have _on my hands_, Admiral Onasi, is a good pilot and a handy man in a fight. Atton has never posed a threat to me or any member of my crew. What you're accusing him of is part of a path paved by your _wife_, Revan the Sith Lord. Anything you find disgusting about him started with her—"

_Stop it, stop it now before you say what you actually think—_

Sarii slammed her hand down on the communication controls. Onasi's frowning face disintegrated into nothingness, and she leaned back in the chair, raising a hand to her mouth in shock.

_Master? _Mical called questioningly from wherever he was on the ship.

Sarii ignored him, letting her hand drop into her lap.

_Was this hate the same as the kind that drove you to war in the first place, Padawan?_

Master Kavar's voice was sharp, and Sarii almost cringed, staring up at the ceiling like he was speaking to her from on high.

_Hate comes in all forms, Padawan, even when hidden behind noble goals. As does love._

"You know, you'd think on maybe the fifth time you might answer me or make some sign you're not dead."

Sarii twisted around in her chair. Atton leaned up against the doorway. He rolled his eyes at her, smirking.

"About time. I've been standing here saying your name for half a parsec."

Guilt socked her in the stomach from all sides, and she felt torn between playing back the Admiral's transmission for him so she would be telling the truth and keeping it hidden from him so he wouldn't get angry.

"Hey, you all right?" the pilot said, coming over to crouch next to her.

"Fine," Sarii lied. "We're just getting closer and I don't like it."

"I heard you talking to the Admiral."

Sarii watched him for a moment, waiting for a reaction. Finally she sighed brokenly.

"Talking? Spitting and hissing are more like it."

"Don't worry. It's nothing I haven't heard before. Nothing that isn't true."

Atton scoffed, glaring at the holographic projector like his gaze might send the Admiral an adequate punishment.

"Thanks though, for what it's worth. There aren't exactly people lining up around the galaxy to defend me like that."

"That's what Jedi do," Sarii replied without thinking.

"_Jedi lie. And they manipulate. And every act of charity or kindness they do, you can drag it out squirming into the light and see it for what it is."_

The silence between them teemed with nervous energy and the hum of the communications consoles. Sarii pushed herself up from the chair, moving in front of Atton. She reached up with both hands to rub her neck and shoulders.

"So tell me, do Jedi in exile pick up lots of handsome devils like me around the Outer Rim?" Atton finally said, giving her a smirk and standing up.

"Not really," Sarii answered wryly. "You might leave the Order but the Order never really leaves you, you know?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I kinda do."

He was slowly coming towards her, all soft smirks and casual steps. Sarii bumped into the back of the communications room, up against the bulkhead.

Thoughts that weren't in the realm of Jedi Council assignments overwhelmed her usual reflexes.

"Maybe we should find out what we've been missing," Atton murmured, in a voice she imagined must have melted Twi'lek dancers and cantina barmaids across the galaxy.

Sarii twirled a piece of her ginger colored hair around her finger, holding her other hand close to her side. She hoped she wasn't blushing enough that it brought out the patches of freckles on her face; hoped that they wouldn't light up her cheeks and nose with little orange stars.

"Atton, we can't do this…"

She was involuntarily closer to him, the result of an icy draft that blew through the corridors of the _Ebon Hawk_.

"I'm a Jedi," Sarii said firmly.

"I don't care," he said in a low voice. "I don't care if you're a Jedi. You're not like the rest of them."

And then Atton Rand was kissing her.

She hadn't been kissed since her exile; since wandering around on the Outer Rim with only her shame for company had convinced her to break her Jedi vows of chastity.

_But they're right…this is dangerous…no attachment, you could hurt someone, you could hurt yourself-_

Atton's hands were inching up her arms, brushing her sleeves up so that his fingers and his cracked leather gloves were touching her skin. Sarii tried to remember how this worked- if her hands were supposed to go around his neck, or if she was supposed to lean into the kiss—

_He'll kill me if he loves me._

"No, we can't. I can't," Sarii stammered, trying to push away from him. His hands stubbornly clung to her elbows.

"What are you so afraid of?" She glanced up at him.

_You_.

Atton's face fell, his jaw hanging slightly open.

Sarii used the opportunity to slip under his arm and retreat from the cockpit, leaving him stuck in that position with one hand against the bulkhead and a scowl creeping into his face.

"_How did your pilot know your Padawan's desire to stop the crew of the _Screamer _from continuing their Jedi hunt?"_

She felt Kavar's hand on her shoulder like a protective blanket.

_How did he know Dustil Onasi's past? How does he now know exactly what you're thinking? He is not all he appears to be, Padawan. He is both more and less._

_They both have brown hair, _Sarii admitted._ They're both Force-sensitive._


	13. Chapter 12

_"Katrina—"_

_He broke off. His heart pounded like firing torpedoes against his chest. _

_She touched his beard, running her fingers over it, turning the back of her hand against his cheek. _

"_What's wrong?"_

_He understood why she was asking- he only ever made the name slip nowadays when he was agitated or nervous or angry. He wondered for a second why he was so nervous— he'd done this before, after all, and it had gone perfectly even though he had been nervous then too._

_Carth pushed himself up on his elbow, reaching over her, over the headboard to grab something off the window ledge._

_He placed it on her bare stomach, and watched as her hands moved lazily to inspect the small metallic box._

_"Carth-" Katrina began, stopping._

_He tried to gauge her reaction even though she didn't give him much to work with beyond the way she turned the box in the low light, trying to catch the reflections of the ring it had taken him a week to find._

_"Marry me, gorgeous," Carth murmured, his chin grazing her forehead._

_She smiled, inspecting the ring between her fingers, running the fine cut lines of the silvery stone against her palm._

_"You don't have to marry me, flyboy."_

_"I _want _to marry you," he added pointedly._

_"It's been almost seven years now. How old is Celyn? Practically three?" Katrina said, glancing up at him as he leaned over her, tracing her neck with his fingers._

_"It wouldn't hurt her any if her parents were married," he replied, even though that hadn't struck him as a reason until now. Katrina rolled her eyes._

_"You didn't 'knock me up', Carth. I don't have a father who's going to come after you with a blaster rifle." _

_Carth laughed for a moment, secretly relieved that there were no in-laws for him to deal with. He couldn't imagine what the mother-in-law of a former Sith Lord would be like._

_"I'm not doing a very good job at this, am I?"_

_"No. No, you're not," she agreed. He sighed, kissing her forehead._

_"All right. Let me start over. I love you-"_

_"I love you too. You don't have to marry me to prove it-"_

_"Damn it, woman, would you at least let me begin?" He narrowed his eyes in irritation but there was still a smile playing at his lips._

_"I love you. More than I've ever loved anything since…since my wife died, and I didn't even think that was possible."_

_She touched his chest, still warm and lined with drying sweat._

_"I know it's been seven years already. I want there to be another seven years. And seven more after that until I'm blown up in space somewhere." _

_He traced up and down her arm with his fingers, hoping he'd been romantic enough._

_"Marry me, Revan," he repeated softly._

_Katrina slipped the ring onto her finger. He grasped her hand, liking the weight of it and how the ring settled nicely against one of her lightsaber calluses._

_She giggled._

_"What's so funny?"_

_"This. It's just so…normal."_

_Carth smirked, kissing her ear and moving to her neck._

_"Yeah, well, I thought you deserved something normal for a change. You still haven't answered me, gorgeous."_

_"Mmph," she tried to answer at the same time he moved to her lips._

_"Yes," Katrina breathed, reaching up to brush a strand of hair out of his eyes. "You could have asked me as the Star Forge was burning and I would have said yes."_

_"Oh? So you really did think I was the most handsome pilot in the galaxy?"_

_"Sure. Considering you were the only pilot I knew at the time." She laughed as he sighed melodramatically, rolling onto his back and putting his hands behind his head._

_"And you want to marry me," Katrina murmured, leaning over him and smiling._

Carth felt himself almost slipping out of the pilot's chair. He bristled, grasping the sides of the chair and pushing himself back up.

He folded his arms and closed his eyes, trying to chase down the dream so he could have it again. He had almost managed to fall back asleep when Dustil's footsteps started echoing down the corridor and came tapping into the cockpit.

"Don't you hear that?" his son said irritably, his voice still slightly hoarse and his hair sticking straight up on one side of his head.

"Hear what?" Carth yawned, just as he noticed the harsh blinking of the proximity alarm on the console in front of him and the intermittent beeping that had somehow blended into the background of his sleep.

Dustil reached forward to shut it off. He paused, rubbing an eye and leaning over the console.

"Father, the ship it's indicating isn't the _Hawk_."

Carth forced himself awake as Dustil slid into the co-pilot's chair next to him. The tiny green dots that indicated their position and the _Hawk_'sglowed happily on the screen, flanked by a few blinking red dots that did not look as happy.

"Are they fighters or what?" Carth murmured, reaching above his head to charge the shields and turret gun.

"Three of them are. The other's just a standard freighter. None of them have their weapons charged either," his son answered, furrowing his brow. "Wait, there's two more— they're both freighters. I don't get it."

"_Ebon Hawk_," Carth said into the comm system, clearing his throat. "Are you picking up any other ships in close proximity?"

"We've got a full welcoming crew, _Chaser_," one of the women replied. Carth hadn't spent enough time with them to be able to tell if it was the Exile or the bounty hunter. "I hope we're not planning on sitting around and waiting for the fireworks."

_Definitely the bounty hunter, _Carth thought.

Remli Prime began to stand out from the rest of the stars surrounding them and grew larger in the window. Two fighters passed over his head in the direction of the mottled dirt-colored atmosphere.

"Looks like it's just your average space traffic," Dustil murmured next to him.

Even from a distance, Carth could make out the neat patterns of regulated space lanes, the kind you saw outside of every civilized planet. Freighters were lined up waiting for their turn to land. Exiting ships slowly floated by in pre-planned routes until they were far enough away from the planet to vanish in a flash of hyperspace.

"There's definitely something here," he heard Mical murmur over the still-open comm channel.

"Now by something, do you mean Sith with bad intentions or just, you know, a populated planet with a hell of a lot of somethings trying to land on it?" the bounty hunter replied acidly.

"No, there's something different about this place," the Exile broke in. "It _feels_ different."

Carth exchanged a glance with Dustil, reaching to cut off the channel.

"It doesn't feel that different to me," his son said quietly, shrugging. "It feels familiar, almost—"

"_Transmit vessel ID and coordinates. Complete landing code 047.3._"

Carth's hand froze above the communication controls as the command that had been transmitted to the _Ebon Hawk_ (still a parsec or so ahead of them) echoed sharply in the confined cockpit of the _Chaser_.

There was silence over the comm for a moment, accented with various nervous sighs or exhales from the _Hawk_'s crew.

"Vessel ID registered _Ebon Hawk_, landing code 047.356."

The voice that repeated the code calmly and effortlessly was that of the _Hawk_'s pilot, Atton Rand.

"_Transmit vessel ID and coordinates," _the sharp command now demanded of the _Chaser. "Complete landing code 124.0."_

There was silence on the still open channel from the _Hawk_.

"Want to help us out over here, _Ebon Hawk_?" Dustil called, his hand poised over the respond switch.

"124.033," Rand answered smoothly.

"Vessel ID registered _Jedi Chaser_, landing code 124.033," his son recited like he was trying to read an official document in Twi'leki.

The gentle hiss of static from the _Hawk_'s channel cut off abruptly with only the beginning of a "What—" from one of the women.

"Speaking of feelings," Dustil finally breathed. "I've got a couple of bad ones right now."

Old instincts and new ones made Carth frown down at the metallic lines covering the audio units of the console.

He didn't like having a deserter of the Fleet in complete control of the _Ebon Hawk. _He didn't like having a former Sith traveling with a still somewhat naïve Jedi and her Padawan. He didn't like having a former Jedi hunter with him on, well, a hunt for a Jedi.

More specifically, he didn't like the fact that the pilot knew specific landing procedures and codes for a planet where they suspected captured Jedi were taken for unknown purposes.

He dropped into the atmosphere of Remli Prime, carefully following a trail of beacons that directed him underneath the thick brown clouds that covered the entirety of the planet's lower atmosphere. It took him a moment of hearing a few random scrapes against the _Chaser_'s hull to realize that the dense fog wasn't clouds- it was a planet-wide thicket of sharp brown thorns and vines.

Long entry and exit tunnels for freighters and other ships had been carved out of the dense brush, and Carth followed his until it ended in a wall of tan-colored rock and the thin blue slit of a docking station.

He noticed the _Hawk_ settling down next to him. Its scorched metal and that of the other beat up ships around them stood out like a sore thumb in the pale slate coloring of the dome-shaped port.

"Admiral, come straight over to the _Hawk_. Don't go any further into the dock," the Exile instructed. He recognized her voice from the wavering she did on 'Admiral'; the halting and flatness of her words that meant she had probably been told to say that.

Carth got up from the chair, stretching out the kinks in his back. Dustil brushed his fingers through his hair, trying to get it to lay flat on his head.

"We'll have to keep an eye on him," he murmured, following his son through the corridor, waiting patiently as he retrieved his lightsaber and slipped on his boots.

"Who? Rand?" Dustil said, glancing up at him and losing his balance. He hopped unsteadily on one foot before mashing it into the boot.

"Yeah. Especially here. You said you had some bad feelings about this place—"

"Everything here feels blocked, Father. It's like I'm getting one big cold shoulder from the Force. But it's still familiar—"

"Familiar? Like…like maybe someone you know?" Carth offered. He felt woefully inadequate trying to make sense out of something he knew next to nothing about. "Maybe was Katrina here?"

Dustil looked away, fingering the edges of his lightsaber hilt before letting it dangle against his belt. He squeezed past Carth in the corridor, walking briskly towards the gangplank. His words were tossed over his shoulder, clipped and short.

"Familiar like Korriban."

_Carth thought he could make out the distant echo of squeaking, someone trying to grind metal together, maybe the sputtering choke of a hyperdrive trying to start._

_Juhani burrowed even further into the golden fur that was standing up around her neck. She glanced at him and then turned away, as if she knew something he didn't._

_It took a moment or so for Carth to discern the wavering pitches of sentient screaming from what he had thought were sounds too high to be anything living._

My son is somewhere in here…is my son the one screaming?

'_My son' felt strange to think of and not immediately classify the noun to a dead body, file away the possessive to something he no longer had._

_Katrina kept her pace casual, her lightsaber and Juhani's dangling from either side of the black belt that had come with the standard issue Sith uniform. It looked like a sack on her, the way it stuck out around her elbows and knees in stiff angles and bunched in loose grey folds on her hips._

_She watched shadows turn around corners and followed the steps of the occasional student or Master they passed with an intense look in her eyes, almost as though she was on her own and he and Juhani weren't following her. The look didn't surprise him- she was always focused. Bastila told her to find the Star Maps; she'd found three. He wanted to find Dustil; she was finding Dustil._

'_Dustil' felt strange on his skin, like fingers prodding on the left side of his chest._

_Katrina wandered down a hallway, pausing to figure out where they were. The Academy was a dozen identical stone rows, and they didn't exactly have an orientation program complete with a campus map for newcomers._

_"Perhaps we should ask," Juhani suggested quietly._

_"Why would I be asking?" Katrina murmured, shaking her head._

_"It's worth a shot," Carth said, almost too eagerly and definitely too loudly. His voice echoed in the short hall, off the crudely carved squares used as dormitories._

_A computer near them, maybe around the corner, beeped indignantly as if their talking had disturbed it. Katrina held up a few fingers indicating for them to wait there and rounded the corner._

_"You take a wrong turn somewhere?" a voice echoed sharply around the stone. Carth couldn't see past the end of it. He instead watched Katrina exhale, her lips parting ever so slightly._

_"I need some questions answered," she began in that tone she had adopted since entering this place, the one that made the simple request sound more like an irrefutable command._

_"As if I'm not busy enough with my own work? Go pester someone else with your stupid questions." _

_It was a young man's, and he was doing something with his vowels that seemed very, very odd to Carth if only he could remember why it was odd._

_Katrina's eyes narrowed, studying whatever Sith student was standing behind the stone pillar out of Carth's view._

_"There's no need to act like that—"_

_"Oh, I'm sorry, did I hurt your feelings?" the voice interrupted mockingly. "Why don't you run to Master Uthar and tell him all about it? I'm sure he'll be very sympathetic."_

_"I might, unless you'd like to make an issue out of it," Katrina replied, raising an eyebrow._

_"You know what I want?_ _I want for you to run along and do whatever it is you're supposed to be doing. I'm too busy to deal with morons."_

_The Sith student's voice cracked almost imperceptively on 'want', the 'a' rising to a slightly higher pitch for the briefest of moments._

Dustil wanted a Hapan Puzzle Box for his birthday. That was the last thing he said he wanted—

_"Off to Uthar then," Katrina said, folding her arms in front of her in that calm, unruffled way he had watched her infuriate port authority officers with. "Who should I tell him sent me?"_

_"The name's Dustil. That satisfy your curiosity enough?"_

'_Dustil' felt like something had leapt up into his throat and ballooned against his skin, and he swallowed hard._

_Carth didn't hesitate. He dashed around the corner._

_Dustil stood— he couldn't think of a happier phrase than 'Dustil stood'. Dustil stood there between his bed, the computer and the wall. Dustil glared at Katrina. Dustil turned his head to look at the new person who had interrupted him._

_He couldn't see the differences at first; he could only see Dustil, his son, alive. No longer 'had been', no longer 'once was', but alive._

_He was taller, maybe three or four centimeters, almost as tall as him now. Brown eyes, tapered chin that was part Morgana and part some old Onasi relative, thick brown hair— the sideburns were new._

_And so was the look he was giving Carth; the drawn paleness of his cheeks, even under the low lighting in the Academy. The way his shoulders were stiff and his body cowed inward, like he was a pup that had been hit too many times. A flash, a flash of something in his eyes and then that new gaze, hard and impenetrable like Katrina's folded arms._

_"Dustil," Carth finally managed, clearing his throat. "Is that you?"_

_Dustil just stared at him for a moment, like a droid who had temporarily forgotten its programming. And then he spoke._

_"Oh, great. It figures that you'd show up after all this time. Couldn't you have gotten yourself blown up on some ship and saved us the reunion?"_

'_Reunion' felt like something slowly deflating._

* * *

There was utter silence in the cockpit of the _Hawk_, the last three digits of the code Atton had calmly provided echoing off its battered hull.

Finally Mira reached forward and flicked the comm switch to cut off the open channel between themselves and the _Jedi Chaser_.

"What the hell was that little display? Start talking fast, Rand."

"I didn't think it existed. I thought it was just a rumor," the pilot said softly under his breath. The bounty hunter physically leaned over to try and hear him better.

"Thought _what _was just a rumor, Atton?" Mical said, folding his hands in front of him and tilting his head.

Atton ignored both of them, carefully maneuvering the _Ebon Hawk _into the atmosphere of Remli Prime.

"How did you know those codes, Atton?" Sarii pressed.

"They're standard Sith military entry numbers," he said flatly, down into the control console. "Code completion is normal procedure."

"And you remember them?" Mira said, her mouth twisted into something either confused or disgusted or both.

Atton glared at her.

"I used them a lot."

An ominous screeching noise slid across the roof of the cockpit. Atton adjusted the controls slightly, and Sarii watched a few crooked brown branches dotted with a million tiny thorns slide down the windows in front of them and fall.

_We should tread lightly here, Master, _Mical said, in a tone so serious that Sarii thought he was Kavar for a moment.

_If not treading here at all isn't an option, yes, Padawan, _she replied, glancing at him.

The planet was like being in a Force cage; Sarii could feel nothing. She was blocked in every direction, not only by the tunnel of thick brown thorns surrounding the ship, forcing them towards the thin blue lines and smooth tan rocks of the dock ahead; but by a variety of inane numbers and specifications and statistics that beat dully against her head.

_Sort of like chanting Pazaak numbers._

"What do you mean you didn't think it existed?" she murmured, keeping her gaze fixed on the back of Atton's head. "What was just a rumor?"

"This place. If they're using old Sith codes, there's old Sith here. And the codes they're using are specific ones; ones _I _used a lot."

He glanced over his shoulder at her meaningfully.

_Ones he used a lot…for what he did for the Sith._

_"When we couldn't turn the Jedi, rumor was they were sent somewhere else, somewhere within the Unknown Regions, a place designed to break them."_

_"Did Revan plan this too?" Sarii said hoarsely, beyond shock by now._

_"They said she found something out there in the middle of the war. Something she was incorporating into her plans for the galaxy before Malak ended all that. I heard talk in the ranks, troops vanishing. I didn't believe it - or want to believe it."_

The dock was populated with a few freighters that looked at least as battered as the _Hawk_, if not ready to be dismantled into space garbage. The ceiling curved up in a large circle to form a dome over their heads. Sarii spotted a couple of empty Force cages lining the perimeter of the dock's smooth grey walls.

Atton landed the ship and it bounced roughly on its landing posts before settling. The loose wires above their heads in the cockpit continued to swing against each other and the rattling of loose panels echoed through the ship as it settled.

"Okay," the pilot breathed, turning around in his chair. "First of all, tell Admiral Paranoia and his son to get over here, and not to go any further into the dock."

"Not to go any further into the dock—" Sarii began to repeat.

"Will you just say it already?" Atton snapped. "I'm not going to be held responsible for anything that happens here if it happens as a result of people not listening to me."

Sarii obediently rose and walked over to the console, leaning over Mira to flick on the comm switch.

"Admiral, come straight over to the _Hawk_. Don't go any further into the dock," she recited.

She leaned back against the part of the _Hawk_'s control console that jutted out and formed a wall between the pilot's seat and the co-pilot's seat.

"All right," Atton breathed, running a hand through his hair and gripping the back of his neck. "Mira, you're coming with me."

"And what of us?" Mical said, rising from his seat and resting an elbow on top of it.

"You?" the pilot snorted derisively. "_You_ aren't going anywhere. You, Sarii, and the Onasi kid are staying here. Jedi can't just—"

"We cannot hide on our ships, Atton. The Republic and the Jedi Order require information about this threat. Remli Prime appears to be a more substantial example than anything we have encountered thus far—"

"We don't need the Force to gather information, Mical," Atton said witheringly. "Mira and I can do just fine on our own—"

"What's this 'Mira and I' business?" the bounty hunter broke in. "I don't feel particularly comfortable walking around on a planet run by former Sith assassins and not having any Jedi at my back—"

"So, what's the big important hold-up?"

Sarii blew hair up against her forehead at the sound of Dustil Onasi's voice, frustrated that they had been so prompt in following her instructions. The young Jedi Knight strolled into the cockpit, nodding briefly in greeting. The Admiral trailed behind him, glancing over the _Ebon Hawk_ with a critical eye.

"The planet, or this port, at the very least, appears to be populated with a number of former Sith soldiers," Mical explained.

"So?"

"So Sith are dangerous," Atton sneered at Dustil. "Especially the kind that might have been the market for buying Jedi off of an outfit like the _Screamer_."

"Maybe you can explain how you knew their landing codes then." Onasi's glare was practically identical to his son's.

The two men stared hard at each other. Sarii shifted her weight uncomfortably and tried to look at Mical or Mira instead.

"You know all about me, Admiral," Atton said, his gaze never wavering, not even a flicker of an eyelash as he stared Onasi down. "Yeah, I used to use those codes. This place is probably a conversion center for Jedi bought off the Exchange or rounded up by bounty hunters, though why it would still be operating after the Sith lost the war I don't know. It's too dangerous for the Jedi to wander around looking for information. There's too many methods and tricks they have for finding a Force sensitive."

"But Atton, you're—"

_"And then, right when I thought she couldn't take anymore - she showed me the Force. In my head. And I felt everything she felt, and how what I was doing..."_

_Atton wasn't even looking at her anymore. His gaze was somewhere that didn't include her, their mission, or the dingy alley on Nar Shaddaa._

_"I killed her for crawling in my head, for showing me that."_

_He's Force sensitive. But he doesn't want to be. He hates that he is._

"You're …taking a big risk here." Sarii said, stopping herself.

"If you want information out of this place, this is the only way to do it," Atton murmured, eying her strangely for a moment. He pushed himself out of the chair and tightened his belt.

The Admiral nodded.

"Let's go, then."

"Didn't you hear me? I said the Jedi have to stay on the ship—"

"I'm not a Jedi, am I?" Onasi said sharply, raising an eyebrow.

"I'm going too," Sarii said quickly.

"No," the pilot snapped, exasperated, "You're _not_."

"She knows how to take care of herself, Rand," Mira reassured him. "You don't have to babysit her. Besides, there's three of us. And I don't know about Admiral War Hero, but I'm pretty sure at least you and I are good with a blaster."

Atton scowled, glancing at Mical, Dustil, and finally the Admiral before deciding that he wasn't going to get any support from them. He fixed his gaze back on Sarii.

"Atton, I'm going," Sarii repeated firmly.

The pilot frowned but kept his mouth shut. He moved to exit the crowded cockpit, squeezing his way roughly past Onasi. The Admiral turned and went after him down the corridor. Sarii and Mira followed.

"Oh, great. And just what the hell are we supposed to do?" Dustil called after them, throwing his hands up in the air.

"Meditate," Mira called back wryly over her shoulder.


	14. Chapter 13

Kosiah owns the 'hessi'. If I had one, I would name him Mr. Ed ;)

* * *

For a moment, Sarii desperately wished Kavar would say something. She felt like a nervous, inexperienced Padawan. But her late Master was nowhere to be found, which was probably for the best. A presence as strong as his would likely be detected easily.

Atton Rand was not a Jedi Master, but somehow not following his advice in this place felt like an incredibly unwise move on her part.

"Do you remember what I told you?"

The pilot jabbed her in the ribs with his elbow, and Sarii batted him away, trying to get her bearings.

The cleanliness of the dock unnerved her. Sterile, almost; silent except for the quiet hiss of air from either depressurizing ships or the climate controls. Even those ominously empty Force cages were lined up in perfect parallel rows against the walls.

"Told me about what?" Sarii murmured distractedly.

"Pazaak."

"Don't you ever talk about anything else?" Mira muttered behind them.

"Pazaak? I—"

Atton was staring her down.

_"What are you thinking about right now?"_

Not you, not you—

_"How you're evading the question. Are you going to answer me?" Sarii replied. Atton shook his head gravely._

_"No. I can only teach you to play pazaak," he said, his words a dull, monotone drum beat. "Do you understand what I'm saying?" _

Sarii suddenly blushed.

"I remember," she murmured quietly.

"Good. Play a _lot _of Pazaak." Sarii nodded obediently.

"And no matter what you see or hear, do _not_ react to it, understand? Just keep your mouth and your mind shut."

"And hide that damn thing," he said hurriedly, trying to shove her lightsaber inside a pocket that didn't exist. Sarii caught it before it fell to the ground and slipped it into her bag.

The foyer they entered was also immaculate. Skylights that had probably at one time looked up into the sky were now completely covered with the brown thorns. The lighting was artificial and overly bright, casting blindingly white reflections on the slate-colored walls.

The Admiral was a few steps ahead of Mira and Sarii, neck and neck with Atton. The two men seemed to be unconsciously vying for the position of leader.

"It looks like a whole lot of nothing," Mira said quietly in her ear.

Sarii spotted a cantina and two trading posts. Aside from that, there was nothing in the foyer or the dock that gave Remli Prime away as a Sith conversion center. The few people milling around the facility looked like either mercs and bounty hunters, on their way to and from the docks; or everyday civilian-clothed humans— if everyday included getting their hands dirty and living on an all-male planet. The cuffs of the humans they passed were lined with something dark brown and dried. There were no women, anywhere; and all of the non-humanoids appeared to be just passing through.

Sarii watched one of the humans approach a heavily armed door hidden in the corner. There were two others like it set in between the trading posts and cantina. Each looked somewhat out of place, with their thick black durasteel frames and series of locking mechanisms. Two guards stood watch outside of each one.

"Hey," someone called out gruffly behind them. A hand clapped down on her shoulder.

_Pazaak, pazaak, I'm playing pazaak…I'm no good at pazaak, I don't know how to play, I lose every time…_

"Whoa, hey, sorry there. Didn't mean to make you jump," the voice laughed in her ear. Sarii dared to glance up at him; one of the plain-clothed humans, with an angular face and a closely shaved head of what used to be black hair. "I was just trying to get that old bishwag Rand's attention."

The sound of all three of her companions' blasters sliding back into their holsters made a loud click. Atton pushed his way in front of the Admiral.

"Atton Rand," the man repeated with a grin, reaching forward to shake his hand, giving him a slap on the arm along with it. "I was wondering when the hell you were going to get out here. Took your good sweet time, didn't you?"

"I had a couple things to do," her pilot replied off-handedly.

The man eyed up Sarii and then Mira.

"Yeah, looks like it," he murmured with a lecherous chuckle. "Couple of guys in our squad said you disappeared. No one knew what happened to you."

"Captured for a while. Once the war ended it took some time to find a ship and a crew."

Atton's lies were smooth and effortless. Sarii almost found herself believing them.

"One idiot thought you'd deserted," the man added, laughing harder and shaking his head. "Right. Lieutenant One-Hundred-Percent Conversion Rate was going to have an attack of conscience."

"Did you ever manage to pull out of the seventies, Janko?" Atton ribbed. Janko shook a finger at him, rolling his eyes.

"Eighty-two percent as of right now, thank you very much. So what are you here for anyways? You bringing someone in?"

Sarii twirled a piece of hair around her finger nervously.

"Nah, just checking things out for now. Always thought this place was a rumor."

"So did I, until I got a call-up to come out here and start construction. Might be in the middle of nowhere, but at least it's not too far from the Rim, right? No HoloNet this far into space, but we still manage shipments from the Exchange now and then…"

"How is it still operating with the war over and everything?"

"It's kind of a long story," Janko said, shrugging. "Come on. I'll buy you a drink and we can catch up."

"Do the rest of us get drinks?" Mira said, grasping in the Sith's arm.

Janko gave her another once over and smirked.

"You can have as many as you want, babe."

He gestured towards the cantina. Sarii struggled to keep her pace light and even, and not trip over her own two feet. The weight of her lightsaber in her bag felt like it was dragging her down.

Even the cantina was clean. Bright neon-colored lights ran around the ceiling and illuminated even the darkest corners of the room. Janko led them to a table near the back, gesturing for them to sit down and nodding to the droid bartender, who rolled around behind the bar in a flurry of mechanical noises.

"Do I know you from somewhere?" Janko murmured to the Admiral.

"Uh…I don't think so," Onasi answered, looking away as he sat down between Atton and Sarii.

"I swear I've seen you somewhere before—"

"Probably in the target files," Atton interrupted casually. "Used to be Republic."

"You've still got the walk. Finally figured out which side fit your ideals, huh?" Janko said, nodding in approval.

It seemed to take a great deal of effort for Onasi to nod back. Sarii exchanged a glance with Mira, who sat next to her.

Her head was spinning. She wanted to start sorting out the information but was terrified to think about anything beyond how the metal chair was cold against her skin, or how the music in the cantina was a bit too quiet.

"Don't know what possessed Revan to start anything out here," the Sith conversion artist murmured, taking the drinks off of the droid's tray and placing them on the table. "I've never been off-planet myself, but the bounty hunters that bring in strays from the Rim tell me there's not much else to see."

"The Republic doesn't exist out here at all, then," Onasi said.

Janko chuckled like he was amused, shaking his head at the Admiral.

"You've got nothing to worry about, old man. No one around here's going to call you a deserter or a traitor. I'd be surprised if the Republic's even taken one step inside the Unknown Regions. They haven't got the time and the resources considering how we ripped them apart."

She didn't dare to intrude on anyone else's thoughts, least of all Atton's or Janko's, but Sarii couldn't help but feel Admiral Onasi's anger. He was already outraged, and Sarii had a feeling that Atton's old squadmate had a lot more to reveal to them.

"It was a good run while it lasted," Janko said resignedly, raising a glass briefly towards Atton, who raised his as well and drank it down.

"When we heard news of what Malak did to Revan, we figured this whole place was going to be decommissioned. We started packing everything up, erasing data files, destroying computers— you know, the usual cover-and-run procedures."

Mira took an experimental sip of her drink and quietly spit it back out.

"Then we got a visit from the locals. Turned out they were very interested in our work."

"What kind of locals?" Atton asked, leaning back in his chair and slinging an arm over the back of it.

"Deep space. Planet called Verte," Janko replied, taking swigs of his drink between phrases. "They send us materials and keep the facility running, and every now and then we send them special cases."

"Special cases?" Mira said, leaning towards Janko. Sarii couldn't help but notice that she was deliberately displaying a good amount of cleavage.

Not surprisingly, the Sith conversion artist grinned.

"Sure. Only the ones we don't manage to turn and we still think there's a shot. Usually that doesn't happen, either because we can spot the ones who won't be of much use or because we're very, _very_ good at what we do."

He was trying to play footsie under the table with Mira but his foot was sliding up Sarii's leg instead. She didn't need to use the Force to know that he was probably not thinking about his skill at converting Jedi.

"Why would they want them?" Atton continued.

"They never came right out and said it or anything, but we're pretty sure they're dark Jedi. By now we can tell a Force user from a kilometer away, so no big surprise."

_You're doing a wonderful job with the one right in front of you—_

The thought slipped out and Atton shot her a look. Sarii picked up her drink, trying to make it look like she was actually interested in consuming it.

_If he knows what you're thinking and he was one of them, then there's probably more of them who can—_

_Pazaak, pazaak, I'm playing Pazaak._

"Where do you get all the Jedi you…convert?" Onasi said, sounding a little queasy.

"Bounty hunters and mercs, rounding up the Jedi still in hiding; and the odd Master and Padawan sets on missions. Usually the Masters send their Padawans out on their trials— they're easy to catch," Janko explained. "Any ones that wander into these regions of space are pretty much up for grabs. Bounty hunters say the opinion of the Jedi is pretty low around these parts, which makes my job easier."

"Business slow lately?" Atton murmured, gesturing with his glass to the relative calm around them. Janko sighed dramatically.

"Pretty much. I haven't seen any action for a while. And there aren't even any girls around to waste some time with."

He eyed Mira with a calculating smirk. The bounty hunter returned it, one flirt shy of batting her eyes at him.

"We did get a real live one in here a couple months ago," he added, chuckling ruefully.

Atton smirked, leaning forward over the table.

"Oh yeah?"

"At first we thought she was going to be easy. Practically dripping with pent-up emotion, guilt…"

Sarii wasn't entirely sure but she almost thought she saw saliva glistening on the edges of the Sith's lips.

"A Jedi?"

"Yeah. She was glowing with the Force too, real pretty, slick little number. Little older than I like 'em. But then…ooh boy, was that one cracked."

"How?"

"Well," Janko said, sitting up. "We caught her right from the beginning. Tried to land and didn't know the codes. When that happens we let the ship land anyways. It's the easiest way to get 'em if the bounty hunters don't bring them in. Jedi are too dumb to know when to turn around and run— if they sense something's wrong, well hell, it's their Force-given responsibility to land and fix it, right?"

The Sith rolled his eyes, scoffing.

"And even if it's not some dumb Force user it's just people passing through— interplanetary traders, the occasional lost spacer from the Rim, which always brings in credits."

"Anyways, so she lands…we knew something was up from her ship. The thing was brand spanking new— nobody who isn't out here for a reason has an outfit that nice. She comes off the ship with this assault droid—"

Onasi's brow furrowed and he sat up.

_Assault droid…the droids were hers, and she took them back. Did she take them with her? He can't mean—_

Atton kicked her under the table.

"Round-up crew tries to surround her, but this one must have been in the wars or something," Janko continued, making gestures to illustrate his story with his glass. "Took out two dozen, but sheer numbers'll get 'em every time. No Jedi can fight off forty or more guards, no matter how bright she's glowing. So we brought her down, disabled her droid, threw it back onto her ship to wait for the salvage teams."

"Did you handle her?" Atton asked. Janko shook his head.

"We gave her to Evzen. You remember him? That punk kid, couldn't even keep his codes straight?"

Atton nodded.

"Kid really made a turn-around once he got out here. He's got one of the highest conversion rates in the facility."

The Admiral's eyes were narrow, and he was watching the Sith conversion artist in rapt attention.

"So he's got her strung up, stripped, ready to go. A lot of good men died in that fight, so half the place couldn't wait to hear her start squealing like a stuck mynock. And she starts off asking _him_ questions. Not the usual Jedi bantha crap about why we aren't seeing the error of our ways or anything, but stuff like our monthly intake, and how we came to be out here. Evzen figures he can use her questions against her, so he tells her about how this place was Revan's idea, tries to get her angry."

"Now you remember how scrawny Evzen was…well, he's been building himself up. Figures that the look is half the conversion, so now he's this huge brawny guy- could probably fit my head in his hands," Janko said, holding out his hands to clarify. "Half of his cases get the fits just from seeing him. So he finishes up with his explanations and waits for her to start in with the ranting and the raving against the past and what Revan and Malak did to the Jedi— you know, the usual. Get this: she _laughs_ at him. Starts telling him he has no idea what he's doing, how he's going to regret it and all this crap. Little schutta insisted she was Revan."

Sarii felt like a shyrack against a hurricane trying to read Onasi's thoughts. _Gorgeous, _she heard him think as the information seeped in, _you were _here?

"And at first it was damn hilarious. Picture it; green-eyed brunette, average height, tied up in one of our conversion rooms covered in filth and proclaiming that _she's_ Lord Revan. I tell you, man, funniest thing I've seen in a while. We've got the session on vid if you want to watch—"

"Maybe later," Atton said quickly. Janko nodded.

"But then he injects the truth serum, and between the sweating and the shaking she's still going on about how she's Revan. Never seen anyone resist it so well."

Underneath the table Sarii saw Onasi's hands balling into tight fists. His knuckles turned white and his wrists shook slightly.

"Got pretty annoying after a while, so he starts going harder on her—"

"What did you do to her?" Onasi interrupted, his voice tight and strangled.

The Sith glanced up at the Admiral, exchanging a suspicious glance with Atton.

"It's all standard procedure. Slap a neural band on 'em, strip them down, strap them up in an interrogation room. Inject truth serum and get what you can, and then the real fun begins. Why so concerned, _Republic_?"

Janko was careful in his pronunciation of 'Republic; separating the syllables and making it sound like a racial slur. Under the table, Onasi's hand was already clenched around his blaster.

"He's just not used to our kind of fun," Mira purred. Sarii didn't think the bounty hunter could jam any more allusions into 'fun' if she tried.

_Revan was here, they caught her, tortured her—_

"Shut him up," Mira added through her clenched teeth, tossing another flirtatious grin towards Janko.

Sarii slapped a hand down over Onasi's where it was ready to shoot Janko underneath the table. She gave a quick, nervous cough to cover the audible smack of her fingers over his fist.

"He did a real number on her," the Sith continued, oblivious to the danger his vital organs were in. "Some of his best work, but this one just wouldn't buy anything beyond being Revan."

"So what'd you do with her?" Atton finally said.

"I'll tell you, damndest thing— Evzen leaves her, scratching his head. A cracked Jedi that thinks she's the dead leader of our side's really no good to us. We were going to send her to Verte. Someone that strong in the Force, even if she is crazy, would probably be of interest to them. If she wasn't, we probably would have just tossed her—"

"Tossed her?" Sarii repeated slowly.

Janko turned towards her- the first offering she'd made to the conversation –and stared hard.

_Pazaak…why the hell don't I know how to play Pazaak? List something else, list anything else…every list I know is a Jedi code or tenet of the Order—_

"Put her in with the other rejects and let them kill each other," the Sith replied calmly.

In the moment of silence that followed, Sarii made out three separate sounds; Onasi's heavy inhale and exhale through his nostrils, as though trying to control himself; Atton's casual slurping of his drink as if nothing was amiss; and the smooth slide of a few chairs moving back from their tables around the cantina.

Sarii exploded out of her seat, her double violet blade ignited and in her hands before any of the dozen or so men that had surrounded the table could take it away from her.

_Don't start anything fancy, don't be the first to attack, _Sarii thought. Getting injured would definitely not help her against what the Sith trying to bring her down had in mind.

Breaking out into complicated footwork and advanced lightsaber forms would start a struggle and endanger any innocent bystanders—

_There's probably not one innocent bystander in this place._

Onasi was up with his blaster out, his reflexes only seconds slower than a Jedi's.

"They don't need your help, but thanks for the offer," Janko called to the Admiral.

_Sit down_, Sarii willed, nodding at him. _Sit down, don't get yourself captured too. I can get us information, you can only give it away—_

"Nice one, Rand," Janko said, laughing. "Thought you could sneak one by me, eh?"

"I'm always up for testing my officers. Even the eighty-two percent success rate ones," Atton replied with a shameless grin, clinking his glass against the Sith's.

Most of the cantina patrons were either watching with idle looks or hadn't noticed the commotion. She felt like trying to attack anyone would ruin the surreally quiet atmosphere.

Most surreal of all was Atton Rand, sipping his drink and watching her like she was a Twi'lek dancing show. Mira was twisted around in her chair, biting her lip. She lifted a leg and kicked the Admiral's chair towards him so it hit his thigh, raising her eyebrows pointedly at him.

"The view's better from down here," the bounty hunter murmured, tossing a heavy-lidded gaze over her shoulder at Janko. The Sith smirked and winked at her.

Onasi looked from the bounty hunter to Sarii to Janko, who was leaning back in his chair with his feet folded on top of the table and watching the Admiral with that same suspicious gaze. He finally sat back down.

Sarii resignedly extinguished her blade.

* * *

_Tell me I am not just sitting here and watching a bunch of Sith drag a Jedi off to be tortured._

And yet Carth still found himself sitting at the table, staring after the Exile as the Sith that had been embedded in the cantina descended on her like a feeding hive and roughly ushered her out the door and out of his sight.

_We used to just blast our way through space slime like this. On Taris, Kashyyyk—_

But that had been years ago. And that had been with Katrina—

"So what'd you do with the cracked Jedi?" Atton Rand prompted, gesturing towards Janko.

"Mmm," the Sith nodded. "Well, like I said, we were planning on sending her to Verte. But she was a slippery little schutta…Evzen went back to overdose her on the truth serum and stick her in a coma, but she somehow willed her way out of the neural band. Knocked the kid clean out. I don't know if his ego will ever recover—"

Carth sighed in relief, uncaring as to whether Janko saw it or not. He struggled to remember every word of the messages Katrina had sent, searching for some clue that she might have recently been tortured by Sith.

_Dammit, beautiful, if you had told me what was going on out here I would have left months ago, and Dodonna could have just gone to hell—_

_And that's probably why she didn't tell you, _he thought bitterly to himself.

"What, you just _let _her go?" Rand objected, frowning at the Sith officer.

"No, wait, it gets better," Janko said, holding up his hand. "So of course she's headed for her ship when we get a great idea. She's obviously been cleaning out her ears with her lightsaber, thinking she's Revan and everything, and she landed here to investigate or try and take us over or some kind of delusional fantasy— so we figured just let her continue landing uninvited. On Verte, specifically. Tossed the coordinates to her ship along with some phony message about the planet."

"Slick. Think it'll work?"

Janko shrugged, pushing himself back from the table and standing up.

"Either way, she's not our problem anymore."

The pilot and the Sith were walking out together. Carth grabbed Mira's arm, pulling her back.

"Great. Just _great_," Mira muttered under her breath.

"We'll go back to the ship, get Dustil and—"

"Shh," the bounty hunter hissed, glancing around warily. "This may come as a shock, but you aren't going to win an Atori for your acting performance today. Keep your mouth shut until we get back to the _Hawk_."

Carth felt sick to his stomach, and he hadn't even gotten a glimpse of what might lie behind those armored black doors.

Dustil had been dead-on. This felt like Korriban, all right; trailing after someone who knew what they were doing, pretending to be something he wasn't, knowing there was injustice and suffering all around him and being unable to do anything about it because it would give them away.

_Searching desperately for someone you love who might be way in over her head. Exactly like Korriban._

"Hey, you want the one you brought in?" Janko asked Rand as they neared the exit of the cantina.

"I thought you guys were hard up for jobs."

The Sith shrugged.

"For old times' sake."

"All right, I'll be around," Rand murmured, grinning. "Should keep in practice. It's been a while."

"Yeah, well, don't take too long," Janko said, slapping him on the shoulder. "That was a pretty little thing you found…somebody might beat you to it."

At a loss for words as he watched the Sith disappear through one of the heavily armored black doors, Carth followed his orders and kept his mouth shut until all three of them were clanking their way back up the gangplank of the _Ebon Hawk_.

"That was wonderful, Rand," Mira snarled at the pilot, who kicked a box of tools out of his way savagely. A hydrospanner flew across the center of the ship and hit the doorframe leading to the cockpit.

"She wouldn't listen. I told the Jedi to stay on the ships, but no, she _had _to come along—"

"This is not the Exile's fault, Rand," Carth added sharply. "It's yours. And it's our responsibility to go get her out of it."

"The one time being a part of this might have actually been useful and everyone decides to ignore me!" the pilot ranted to himself, as though Carth hadn't said anything at all.

There was a collection of dirt and grime on the corner of the panel in front of him. Carth resisted the urge to start scraping it off, just like he had resisted the urge to secure the loose wires and tighten the rattling bolts all over the _Ebon Hawk_. The ship chugged around them with the effort of maintaining power. There were a few more creaks and groans from her used metal, far more than he remembered.

This couldn't be what Katrina had come all this way to fight. For one, she'd left it behind and still running. For another, the Sith had mentioned a different place— Verte.

_Is that where your messages stopped? Is that where the homing signal's leading us? Did you fall for what they set up for you?_

He couldn't picture Katrina falling for anything a piece of Hutt-spawn like Janko and the other Sith here would throw at her. Then again, Carth couldn't picture her being defeated and tortured either._ Strung up, stripped, ready to go—_

Mical came striding into the room.

"Where's Master Zhen?" he said, his features already set in a stately look of disapproval.

"Our brilliant leader got herself a backstage pass to Jedi Conversion 101," Mira replied, voice acid.

Dustil ambled in after the Exile's Padawan, taking in all of them with the raised eyebrow and critical gaze that he must have unconsciously picked up from his former Master.

"Well, good we were left behind, eh Mical?" his son murmured. "Looks like we didn't miss anything other than more infighting—"

"Shut up," Rand snapped at Dustil.

"All right," Carth breathed. "Everybody calm down. There's two Jedi and the three of us. We're going to fight our way in and get the Exile back—"

"No, _I'm _going to go get her back," Rand interrupted, straightening up and cracking his knuckles.

"Because you did _so_ well keeping her out of there the first time," the bounty hunter taunted.

"I'm under serious doubts as to whether you should even be allowed outside of a locked cargo hold, kid," Carth said flatly.

"You didn't help at all back there, old man. If you hadn't started bouncing off the fracking walls over Revan, Sarii wouldn't have been distracted and she might have been able to hide herself better—"

"That doesn't change the fact that you just _sat there _and let them drag her off—"

"Yeah, and going all hero and waving my blaster around like you were about to do would have made the situation all better, wouldn't it?"

"Whoa, why are we bouncing off the fracking walls over Revan?" Dustil broke in.

"She stopped here and got a taste of Remli Prime hospitality towards Jedi," Mira explained.

Dustil stood silent for a minute, glancing up at Carth like he was waiting for him to actually start bouncing off of the _Ebon Hawk_'s dented and beat-up corridors.

"I'm sure she's fine—"

"I'm sure she's fine too," Carth said, waving him off.

_"Don't try to move too quickly. You may not be fully recovered yet."_

_Bastila's voice was haggard, a strange combination with her correct and aristocratic speech._

_Katrina nodded but still pushed herself up from the floor of the Force cage anyways. Her arms shook slightly with the effort and her knees wavered like a newborn hessi's before righting themselves._

You'll try, Saul, but you won't take anything more away from me. Not Dustil, not her.

_He had wanted to tell them all about Dustil. About Korriban and everything they had done there. He had wanted Katrina to start giving them a detailed report on the Star Forge, just to make the pain stop._

_But she hadn't. And she now glanced over at him through the three glowing blue cages, her own face pale and drawn from the surging of the torture fields that he had watched pound into her even after she was unconscious._

_"They tortured all of us, though you got the worst of it by far," he murmured, somehow thinking that might make the look on her face go away. "Saul wanted them to make us suffer. He's become some sort of sadistic monster."_

_"The dark side has perverted him, Carth," Bastila said. "Once you start down the tainted path it leads you ever further into the depths of evil. I fear he is forever lost."_

_"Don't you ever get tired of being so preachy?" Katrina snapped, either from the still-lingering pain or the guilt in her eyes that said Saul's perversion wasn't about to make her feel any better for letting Carth be tortured._

_"This is not a matter to joke about!" Bastila shot back. "If there is one thing we can learn from Saul it is how the power of the dark side can corrupt even the bravest of heroes!"_

_The Jedi sighed heavily. Carth almost thought he saw something that could have passed for guilt in her eyes too as she glanced at Katrina, though for what reason he didn't know._

_"I'm sorry. Forgive me. Snapping at you like that won't help our situation."_

_They fell silent, standing on their stiff, worn limbs for what seemed like hours._

_"First Taris, now the Academy... is there no end to the killing?" Bastila said quietly._

_"Maybe Admiral Karath was lying," Katrina offered, but even she didn't sound like she believed it._

He doesn't have to lie. He's done enough—

_"I'd like to believe that Saul was lying to us, but even as he said the words I knew they were true," the Jedi replied, shaking her head. "The Academy is gone._ _We should have felt a disturbance in the Force when the attack came. The fact that we did not is a bad sign. I fear the dark side is growing stronger, casting shadows our vision cannot pierce."_

_"None of this will matter if we don't get out of this prison before Saul gets back—" Carth added._

_The door hissed open. For a second there was no one outside of it. He exchanged glances with Katrina on the other side of the room._

_Juhani finally crept around the corner, extinguishing her lightsaber and crossing to the control panel._

_"Well done, Juhani," Bastila sighed in relief._

_The thin blue haze that had tinted his vision for hours finally dissolved into nothing. Carth half stumbled out of it, trying to get feeling back into his legs._

I'll need it, I'll need every ounce of strength I have to—

_"I'm sorry."_

_Katrina was almost whispering, quiet so Bastila and Juhani, who were trying open the equipment room, couldn't hear._

_"There was nothing else I could do. I even tried lying to him—"_

_"You had no other choice here, Katrina. You couldn't betray our cause."_

_He glanced over at the two Jedi, too engaged with slicing the computer to notice them. He moved a little closer to her._

_"I... I don't honestly know if I could have been as strong in your position. To watch you suffer like that...I might have cracked."_

_"I know you would never do anything intentionally to cause me pain," he continued. "But it wouldn't have mattered. I've known the Admiral a long time. I could see that he already knew the answers to the questions he was asking."_

Smug, arrogant, throwing Telos back in my face, daring to say the words 'innocents' and 'Republic'—

_Katrina's brow furrowed._

_"Was he just talking air with all that allusion to a history between me and Malak?"_

_"I don't know, beautiful," Carth murmured, moving towards the now-open equipment room that Bastila and Juhani were already in. "Maybe we can beat some answers out of him."_

Before I kill him.

"You've already done enough by not listening to me," Atton Rand said severely, pointing an accusatory finger at Carth. "If you've learned your lesson, _Admiral_, stay here and get both of the ships ready for a quick takeoff."

The pilot turned and disappeared through the corridor in the direction of the gangplank. Carth stormed after him, leaving the others standing in the center of the ship. He could hear their agitated whispers echoing behind him.

Rand grunted as Carth gripped the back of his jacket and slammed him up against the wall.

"What the—"

"I'm all for redemption, and I believe people can be given a second chance," Carth said in a low voice. "But if you make one move against Katrina, Dustil, or any other Jedi on this trip, you won't even have a chance to regret it."

"Touch me again, old man, and I'll kill you."

The pilot's gaze was awfully familiar. _Familiar like Korriban._

Katrina wasn't here. Katrina was or had been on Verte. Wherever that was. Wherever that was, they needed to know.

Reluctantly, Carth released him. Rand scowled, adjusting his rumpled jacket and running a hand through his hair before jogging down the gangplank. His footsteps slammed unmercifully against the metal and it rattled for a few moments before falling silent again.


	15. Chapter 14

If they were going for terrifying, they had fallen short at dirty.

Sarii gave another experimental tug at the binders holding her wrists above her head and her ankles slightly apart. The Sith who had secured them had hung her a little too high so that she was up on her toes rather than standing.

The room was not what was making her antsy. Mold grew on the walls from the mixture of rusting metal and unwashed liquids that she didn't want to guess the identities of. She recognized supplies on the battered and bent shelves that could have, in any other situation, been innocuous: adrenal and cardio stimulants, sensory enhancers, some external regenerator implants.

An idle interest in whether this might have been the room Revan had been in made her involuntarily try and sense the former Sith Lord. A sharp, blinding pain hit her in the middle of her eye.

The neural disruptor around her head prickled against her temples. It felt like an itch that wouldn't go away. Not having the Force wasn't frightening either- she had spent years as an ordinary civilian trying to forget she had it anyways.

For the few moments she had still had access to the Force as she was shoved towards one of the black doors that separated this world from the lily grey of the Remli docks, Kavar had finally come out of hiding to give her some last minute advice:

_Control, Padawan, _he had said, bowing his head and shaking it back and forth mournfully. The motion was familiar- he had performed it each and every single time she made a mistake, whether they were meditating in the Jedi Temple or under a cloud of sweat and dust during a battle.

_Maybe you should go teach Admiral Onasi a lesson about that, Master Kavar, _she shot back. One of the Sith cuffed her roughly between the shoulderblades as if he was disciplining her for talking back.

The hallway behind the door was long and dim, like the bowels of Peragus rather than what was supposed to lead to a terribly efficient Sith conversion center. The sudden shift to darkness from the bright, almost sanitary lighting of the docks made her eyes burn.

_He would not have killed the man, Sarii. You give your companions too little credit, _her former Master continued.

Sarii was pushed into what looked like a standard processing room. Only the stains on the floor and scorch marks on the ceilings marked what kind of processing. A number of storage bins surrounded them, filled with various confiscated items. Sarii shuddered at the familiar brown lumps of Jedi robes spilling over the rim of one of the containers.

She could feel the emotions she had been bracing herself against growing louder and stronger like the unrelenting wail of a banshee. Fear, pain, anger; all of them surrounded her, groping and pawing as real and rough as the Sith who were processing her.

_Loving Revan has not corrupted him. You served with her too— by your logic you should be irrevocably damaged as well._

If Kavar was going to talk, couldn't he have made himself useful?

_I am not…damaged, _Sarii replied, grunting as the Sith guards removed her possessions and half her clothing. One of them wrenched her chin up towards him, chuckling to himself.

"Quiet little thing, aren't you?"

Sarii said nothing. She still had the Force; if she wanted to, she could shove all of them off of her, make a mad dash for the exit.

She refused to let herself acknowledge how desperately she wanted to, how much she was starting to resent Atton and the Admiral and everyone who had possibly played a part in getting her into this predicament.

"They all are at first," another remarked, removing the crystals from her lightsaber and tossing the now-useless weapon into a storage bin with the empty shells of hundreds more. "Least she's not spitting in our eyes like that one a couple months ago."

But fighting back now would mean missing their only opportunity for information; not only what was valuable to the Admiral and his son, but what was valuable to the Republic and the Jedi Order.

The metallic flooring beneath their feet rumbled slightly. The grating shivered and shook from the anguished cry of a Force sensitive many meters away.

Sarii felt her wrists go limp where they were squeezed between her two handlers' fists. She tried not to think of how much she didn't want to be the next one to shake the flooring and tried to concentrate on how she was going to save the Force sensitive that didn't have a Republic agenda to worry about.

_No, you are not damaged, _Kavar had agreed as the neural disruptor was fitted around her head._ Not by Revan herself, at least._

And then her Master had disappeared, along with Atton, Mical, both Onasis and Mira arguing with each other back on the _Hawk_, along with all the sentient life on this planet. No one existed now beyond herself, tied up in this room, waiting for whatever was coming her way.

It was the waiting that was scaring her. Every time she heard the tapping rhythm of footsteps outside of the room, she tensed against the binders, sure that it was her turn.

Every time she had been wrong, and the false alarms only made her more nervous.

_Calm down, _Sarii repeated to herself. Without the gentle murmur of Kavar, the stately conclusions of Mical, or even the furtive recitation of code from Atton, she had only her own voice to help her now.

_As soon as whatever Sith shows up, you'll make it through his interrogation and then escape. Easy as that._

Never mind that she had no idea how she was going to escape with a neural disruptor on her head. She'd never tried to will herself out of one before, and with the pounding that was already in her head she wasn't sure she wanted to.

She also had no idea how she was going to escape without a weapon. Even if she could get back to the processing room and fish her lightsaber out from the bin of confiscated weapons, she couldn't exactly pop the crystal right back in and expect it to work. Although it was easy to remove one, aligning a lightsaber crystal took time and proper tools, even for veteran Jedi.

Sarii was so lost in the mechanics of her escape that she didn't even notice the footsteps coming down the corridor until the door to her cell slid open with a heavy clunk.

"Rand's a little late," the Sith said, in a voice mechanically deep, like he'd taken stimulants or something. "Lucky you, freckles. You get to start with me."

She couldn't even find the Sith's head at first. His biceps were so built up that they looked like bulkheads had been inserted under his skin. His shoulders weren't broad either, which made him look even more misshapen.

She finally noticed the top of his closely shaved scalp, his angular chin and his large ears. It looked like someone had either shrunk his head or mixed and matched a torso with a clashing face.

_Evzen. The one who built himself up, came into his prime when he got out here, handled Revan. This has got to be Evzen, _Sarii thought to herself, sucking in a breath and pressing her lips together, determined not to open them again for any reason.

He was at least a foot taller than her. She wondered if the height was fake too- if there were hydraulic risers in the heels of his black boots. Usually size didn't play a role in her battles- the sight of a Jedi with their long flowing robes, their lit lightsabers and their stoic expressions was enough to cancel out any physical advantages an opponent might have had.

Or, at least, that's what Sarii's Jedi training had taught her to believe. Hanging here in front of an overly stimmed Sith who had no other goal in the world other than hurting her made it a little harder to keep believing.

She tried to make it look like she was standing on her own two feet rather than hanging from her wrists. The efforts made her swing back and forth helplessly like she was tangled up in some cable.

"Rand usually brought in the screamers," Evzen commented, yanking roughly on her hair to move her head around. "Guess times change."

"Where's your tongue, Jedi?" he jeered. "Aren't you going to tell me what a bad, bad Sith I've been?"

Sarii glared back at him.

He crossed to the shelf of injections and stimulants. Sarii strained to see over his massive shoulders, squinted to make out what he was preparing through the dim yellow shadows of the cell.

He came back towards her with the stim injector. A cyan-colored liquid sloshed around inside it. Sarii desperately combed through the rudimentary first aid lessons all Jedi officers had to complete upon joining the Republic war effort, struggling to remember what that color was and any side effects it might have.

Evzen slapped her face to the side and jammed it in her neck. The pinching on her skin wasn't painful, but the sudden slackness of her muscles and limbs was. She hung heavy against the binders on her wrists, and her lower lip fell open. Her body felt at least fifteen degrees hotter.

_Truth serum, _she thought lazily. _In between the sweating and the shaking-_

Her eyes opened wide, realizing the implications of truth serum and a Sith interrogating her.

"Where'd he find you, Jedi?" Evzen said, leaning over her.

"He didn't find me. I found him. Locked up in jail on Peragus."

Her words were slightly slurred; understandable considering that she seemed to have lost control of her lips and what came out of them.

The Sith raised a bushy black eyebrow at her.

"Peragus was destroyed. Atton Rand would never be caught in jail on an asteroid waiting to be blown up or let a _Jedi _save him."

He said Atton's full name almost reverently, like he was his hero and he couldn't believe he would ever be captured or in a situation that he wasn't in control of. He spit after 'Jedi' like being saved or helped by one was the most shameful thing that could ever happen to you.

The serum trickled through Sarii's body and the shaking set in. The binders rattled as her fingers shook against them.

"How about we try again, freckles?" Evzen continued. "How did Rand get you here? Where did he find you and what were you doing?"

"He pilots my ship. He knew the landing codes because he was a Sith-"

Sarii bit down hard on her tongue. Her throat felt like it was on fire with trying to contain the truth.

_Don't talk, don't answer him, don't tell him why you're here, you're a Jedi, you have a mission, you have a Padawan-_

_If _Revan _can do this, you certainly can too-_

"There are Sith here. I was investigating. I am a Jedi," she forced out. That wasn't a lie either.

It was not, however, the answer Evzen had been looking for.

The Sith hauled back and smashed his enormous fist across her face.

The momentum of his flying knuckles threw her head back and to the left. Her wrists and ankles chafed against the binders. Her teeth, still clamped firmly around her tongue, bit down involuntarily from the blow and she tasted blood in her mouth.

"For all the good it does you now," Evzen sneered. "Silence, inactivity…still think they're going to save you, Jedi? Still think they're going to save the galaxy?"

_I wasn't silent or inactive; I followed Revan. I fought in the Mandalorian Wars. I fought to save the galaxy—_

Evzen was berating her for not participating in a war she had been kicked out of the Order for. Evzen had tortured Revan, who had told him the truth all along. The irony of it all plus the light-headedness from the serum and the right hook made Sarii want to giggle.

The Sith was already back at the shelves, rifling through the items in search of something else to inject into her or prod her with.

"All out of the good stuff. Must have used it all up on the last one," he told her nonchalantly. "Last one really enjoyed it."

_If Revan did this, if Revan shivered and shook through this without becoming a Dark Lord again, I can resist twice as much-_

Evzen shot her a smirk over his shoulder, muscles twitching underneath his stretched flesh.

"Don't go anywhere, freckles."

His sheer size made it sound like he was stomping towards the door and down the hallway, even though he only walked casually to the controls, stepped through the doorframe and took his time shutting and locking it, like he had all the time in the world.

Sarii cautiously opened her mouth. Her tongue stayed sandwiched against her upper teeth, and she pulled it off, wincing and letting out a high whimper at the squishing noise it made.

It felt numb. She hoped he wouldn't continue his questioning when he returned- she probably wouldn't be able to say much coherently.

_Get what you can out of them, and then the real fun begins-_

Escape. She thought of escape. He was gone, hopefully he would be gone long enough for her to get herself out of this neural band, break the cold metal grip of these binders-

She heard the muffled sound of the controls outside of the door beeping as someone punched in numbers. Sarii sucked in a sharp, panicked breath.

_No, that isn't fair, _she thought wildly, desperately._ I haven't even had a chance to try and get out yet…_

The very galaxy was against her. Not even a good minute? Had he only gone to a supply room a few doors down or something—

The door slid open and a figure darted inside, quickly shutting the door behind him. It wasn't Evzen. For one, he was about three sizes too small.

"Sarii?"

For another, it was Atton Rand.

"Atton," Sarii breathed in relief. The double 't' in his name came out softened and slurred because of her injured tongue.

The pilot moved quickly through the pale yellow shadows. Sarii caught glimpses of his furrowed brow and his narrowed brown eyes as he undid the binders around her ankles and then her wrists.

Sarii stumbled clumsily off of the tips of her toes like she was drunk, grasping his jacket to steady herself. Her heavy steps made the metallic flooring rattle and echo in the room.

"Shhh," Atton hissed, holding her still and waiting until the rattling had stopped.

"You want to bring the whole complex in here or something?" he added sharply, lifting her arms to check them for wounds and letting them drop roughly against her sides again.

"Get this thing off of me," Sarii murmured, gesturing towards the neural band. Her head ached and it fell silent and dull and empty in her brain.

The pilot shook his head.

"There's no way I can get you out of here without it. Force-sensitives are never taken out of cells without neural disruptors on."

_Atton's done this to people. Atton's entered dingy cells and grabbed the faces of Jedi like me and jammed needles into their necks before._

Atton inspected the blistering red mark on her neck where the truth serum had been injected. Parts of her ginger-colored hair stuck to it and he pulled them out. The pulling hurt and Sarii tried to bat his hands away.

"You all right?" he said in a low voice.

"I'll be fine as soon as we get out of here," she answered, glancing up at him.

"That's _if_ we get out of here," he reminded her, frowning. "I _told _you to sit there and keep quiet. If you had listened to me in the first place, we wouldn't—"

"Fine, you're right," Sarii interrupted. "Can we just get out of here now? Please?"

Even with the slurring from her tongue and the glare she was giving him, Sarii could recognize the fear and panic she'd thought she was doing a good job of hiding.

"If you're hoping to escape alive and with some information, then you've got to do one thing from here on out," Atton continued sharply, ignoring her. "_Listen_ to me. If I tell you to play Pazaak and not react to anything, play Pazaak and don't fracking react. I don't care if fracking _Mical_ comes tearing through here with two heavy repeating blaster rifles in his arms. Do exactly as I say, no matter what it is."

Sarii nodded as vigorously as she could manage.

"We'll pretend I'm taking you to be tossed, but really we just need to get to a free computer console. Hopefully they're still using standard codes for that too," he said quietly, almost to himself. "Stay quiet and if I smack you around or something, don't take it personally—"

Atton's head snapped over his shoulder and he straightened up. He resembled a kath hound trying to catch a scent on the breeze.

"Frack," he breathed.

"What? What is it?" Sarii said, trying to sense whatever it was he had been alarmed by. The neural disruptor burned against her temples.

"Scream."

Sarii glanced back up at him. Atton looked deathly serious.

_Rand usually brought in the screamers—_

"Why do you want me to scream?" she sounded out slowly.

"I don't have time to explain it, okay? Scream. Now."

"Scream? No, I'm not going to scream—"

Atton grabbed her shoulders and slammed her up against the wall. The force of it made her head whiplash back and whack against the metal with a resounding crack. Sarii winced, a few yellow stars dancing before her eyes before she could focus on him again.

"Are you going to _make_ me scream now, Atton?" she snapped nervously.

"No, I'm not going to hurt you—"

His fingers jabbed painfully into her arms.

"In about thirty more seconds it's going to be too late. You have to scream, please, listen to me—"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"Not for me, for them," Atton hissed, giving her an icy glare. "You have to scream. That's what they want, and if they find someone who isn't screaming, they'll scramble to rectify it."

She glanced over his shoulder, studying the darkness of the room, the dingy mildew and stains on the walls, the muggy smell of it that was beginning to be frightening in its own right for the memories it brought back to her.

Evzen was coming back. She could barely hear the pounding of his footsteps in the corridor outside.

"Please, Sarii, trust me. If they don't hear you screaming, they'll come for you. They'll consider you a challenge. Please, you _have _to do this."

Atton's grip loosened slightly, but his gaze never faltered.

"I won't let them hurt you, Sarii, but you _have _to trust me. You have to scream."

His voice was so low, so desperate— gentle even. But trust and being locked in a room with a former Sith assassin did not go well together.

For the first time, she could feel something coming off of him besides the bitter taste of his aloof demeanor and casual indifference. She felt desperation, fear, and anger.

"_Lust, impatience, cowardice..." Atton listed off on his fingers. "Most Jedi awareness doesn't cruise beyond the surface feelings, to see what's deeper."_

Sarii opened her mouth and managed to let out a high whimper. She had suddenly lost her voice.

"No, you have to really scream. Think of something you're afraid of."

Atton eyed her almost mockingly with his last piece of advice, as if daring her to think of him.

"_Now_, Sarii," he hissed. "We're out of time—"

She could think of only one thing that she was more afraid of than being attracted to a talented former Sith assassin.

_She didn't like being on a starship. She was a General, not an Admiral or a member of the Fleet. She was used to being on the front lines worrying about terrain, foliage and weather, not squadrons zipping around in front of the bridge._

_Sarii shivered, burrowing her hands up inside her robe and folding her arms in front of her. Kavar's posture; not hers. As a young Padawan she had thought he'd looked so wise and powerful when he did it- now she knew he had probably just been cold._

_"There's a Mandalorian vessel firing on us, Master Jedi," she heard one of the officers on the Fleet's flagship say over the open comm channel between each command ship. "Our shields are nearly at half power—"_

_"They're just trying to draw us out with the rest of the Fleet."_

_The voice that crackled over the channel was dismissive, calm; a lot calmer than Sarii felt, watching a man die here from gun turret fire, a man die there from a collision with another fighter. But that wasn't surprising— Revan never sounded worried. Sarii was not as good at hiding her fears as her two commanders were._

_The rest of the Fleet was scattered closer to the planet of Malachor V; engaging the battered Mandalorian fighters and starships that looked as primitive as the people manning them. The Fleet had the advantage; they were lifting off of the surface of Malachor V, surprising the Mandalorians from a stocked base on a planet they were forbidden to land or even fire on._

_It was a good plan. In theory._

_In reality, the Mandalorians were (as usual) tougher than they looked. They had taken out an entire medical frigate along with countless fighters and were now poised like firaxian sharks outside a cave, sending a volley of fire towards any Republic ship that strayed too far from the atmosphere of Malachor V._

_"Are all units off the planet's surface?" Malak asked over the channel. He never really sounded panicked either; but his inflection and the grim, rough quality of his voice made it seem like everything he said was of vital importance._

_"All units reported in, Master Jedi," Admiral Karath replied from wherever his ship was. Sarii could see only the planet and the ships in front of her. The larger ones like hers (carrying a number of Jedi foot soldiers), Revan and Malak's, and Saul Karath's hung back in a line outside of the heated space battle._

_She unfolded her arms and began to twist a piece of hair between her fingers until it was tight and it hurt to pull on it._

_"Is everything in order, General Zhen? Is your tech prepared to activate the generator?"_

_"Yes, Master," Sarii answered Revan automatically. The Jedi wasn't a Master and probably never would be considering, but Sarii and the rest of the Jedi addressed her by the higher rank anyways._

_The Zabrak tech in question glanced over his shoulder at her- what was his name? Dur or Bay or something like that- and nodded to further demonstrate that he was prepared._

_Not knowing his name didn't matter right now, Sarii reasoned. He would probably be famous after this; being a man who single-handedly blew up an entire planet._

An uninhabited planet, _Sarii reminded herself forcefully. _There's no one living on it, it's a dead rock in the middle of space that only exists because of old Mandalorian beliefs. The Mandalorians are the enemy, the planet is theirs; therefore, destroying the planet is perfectly acceptable.

_Destroying their sacred ground would kill their morale. It would weaken them, drive them into surrender, or at least that was how Revan had explained it to the Republic brass and the few Jedi commanders allowed into the briefing. _

_The Jedi had already killed Mandalore himself. Sarii hadn't thought there was any more crippling of a blow to deliver to the Mandalorians._

_There would be no second chance to engage the Mandalorians so completely; something had to be done here and now._

_"Go ahead," Revan instructed her over the crackling comm channel. Sarii straightened up. She nodded to the Zabrak tech._

_The bridge was a low murmur of computer consoles, soft orders from lesser officers to underlings, the slight vibration from exploding ships near the planet._

_Sarii only watched the tech, whose hands moved no differently than the ship's pilot or communications officer over the controls in front of him._

_He paused only a moment before pressing the final combination of buttons._

_A faint green glow trickled from the edges of Malachor V like the world was eclipsing some emerald sun. It rippled over the surface, drawing huge cracks that Sarii could trace even from this distance._

_It seemed like there should have been some sound, some noise—_

_The bridge was filled with a flash of harsh white light. Sarii and every Republic officer on the bridge winced and covered their eyes. When she looked again, Malachor V ripped apart in giant pieces of grey rock like someone had literally taken the planet within two fists and was breaking it off into sections. There was still silence, not counting the painful grumbling of the momentarily blinded crew._

_A strange red and orange band of rings sprung up out of nowhere to surround the planet, ballooning and swelling in different parts as the shock wave came rolling across space—_

_The ship rocked violently. Red alarms flashed all over the bridge and the alarms shrieked what the thousands on board the remnants of both the Republic and Mandalorian Fleets caught in the planet's destruction couldn't—_

_Sarii collapsed over the railings, half bent over like she was ready to throw up. The officer sitting at his station below her looked up nervously at her green face._

_The alarms had been turned off, but the screaming and shrieking was still in her head like the Force was methodically categorizing the dying gasps of every last man and woman in the battle._

_She heard the barking of orders, the echo of calls for medical crews to certain sections of the ship; crew quarters where the other Jedi must have been, feeling the aftershocks of Malachor V just as she was here on the bridge. The comm channel between the Republic flagships was unintelligible between the voices of ten or twenty people._

_The ship shimmied in the cloud of debris that was now hurtling towards them like an instant meteor shower. Some pieces vaporized upon impact, others shattered into smaller ones, still more flew harmlessly past them until all outside the realm of the Force was silent again._

Thousands…maybe millions, _Sarii thought. Precise calculations were impossible between the screaming and the death that still rung in her ears. She wondered when it was going to stop- if it was going to stop. She still hung limp and ragged over the railing._

We just blew up half our own Fleet; we just killed millions of innocent men, women, Jedi, Republic, Mandalorians—

_"Master Jedi," the comm channel murmured. "We're picking up a transmission from the remaining Mandalorian frigate."_

_Sarii noticed it limping off to the side, half-adrift, looking like another piece of debris. She could make out a few fighters righting themselves and returning to their respective flagships, some hulks of larger ships struggling in either death throes or desperation._

_"They're sending standard codes of unconditional surrender," the officer on the comm channel repeated in disbelief._

_Then it came; the short, breathless laugh of a low soprano._

_"Inform them that Jedi Revan and the Republic accept."_

"Sarii—"

She slapped Atton's hands viciously where they tried to grasp her shoulders. He rubbed his wrists like her feeble rebuff had actually hurt.

"Sarii, Sarii," he repeated, trying to keep it a whisper, getting louder as she continued to scream.

"You can stop now. You can stop—"

She couldn't stop. She wanted to, but wanting to and being able to were two entirely different things. Atton gripped her elbows, squeezing hard like the pain might distract her.

Sarii's screaming died down into breathless whimpering until she was just in a dry hoarse. Her mouth and her vocal chords were still trying to make sound; she had just run out of it.

"I think you kind of overdid it there," he said jokingly with a nervous laugh. "If it'll help we can take this thing off, I guess—"

Sarii shook her head, gingerly touching the sides of it. Diving right back into the Force right now would be a bad idea. Being disconnected from it was protecting her from the real screaming.

Atton turned towards the doorway, his eyes narrowing again. He straightened up and gripped her arm in one hand and poised the other over the door controls.

"Like I said, just do what I tell you."

The lighting out here was still dim, but compared to the cell it was almost blinding. Atton didn't even bother to look around as they stepped into the corridor.

The only Sith they passed that paid any attention to them was the first one, who nodded to Atton. Every one after barely gave them a second glance. She supposed she looked as horrible as she felt.

It probably also helped that Atton's way of telling her where to go was to cuff either her right or left shoulder. Sarii turned countless corners, wondering if he knew where he was going. When they ended up back in front of her cell again, it became obvious that he didn't.

She slowed their pace despite the pilot stepping on her heels in an effort to make her move faster and carefully studied each door they passed. Most rooms were sealed, and the few empty ones she saw contained nothing but supplies. She tried to remember the route the Sith had taken from the entrance to her cell.

_We passed this intersection…we took a right and that's where one of them almost tripped-_

Sarii stopped dead in front of the next room, glancing over her shoulder at the pilot. Atton took the unspoken cue and yanked her back inside it, shutting the door behind them.

She recognized the bins of items and the computer console; the black scorch marks under her feet. They were back in the first processing room they had dragged her into.

"Go dig your stuff out," Atton breathed, crossing to the computer.

Sarii rubbed her by-now aching arm and rifled through the empty lightsaber hilts. They clinked against each other loudly and the pilot shot her an irritated glare.

"They changed the fracking codes. It must be the beginning of the month…" he muttered to himself as he worked.

The hilt she found was not her own, but it was double and it wasn't horribly beat up. Sarii moved to rummage through the crystals.

There was a loud beep from the computer console.

"Pure Pazaak," Atton said smugly. "They might still change the codes but they're still stupid enough to keep them in the same pattern." He shook his head like he couldn't believe it.

"What did you find?" Sarii said, moving to his side as she haphazardly inserted the crystals into the hilt of the weapon, trying to align them by feel and memory alone.

He glanced at her strangely like he was trying to translate her breathy 'w's and her nonexistent 'd's, products of her numb tongue.

"Every time you bring a Jedi in, you start a file on them. Their name, their Padawan or Master if they have one, where you found them, what they were doing…you can trace a pattern if you bring in enough from one place, start to realize where you might find more or figure out if they're planning an ambush or something."

_"No," Sarii said, shaking her head at him. "I don't believe you—"_

_He gave her that look again, that deathly calm look that said he could have pulled out his blaster and shot her point-blank at any time as she sat next to him on the _Ebon Hawk_ and he wouldn't have batted an eyelid._

_"Yeah? Maybe you'll believe this: that when fighting a Jedi, you wound the Padawan first, then let the rest take care of itself."_

_"Not only will the master move to protect the student," he added, some kind of unstoppable momentum driving his words on. "But the Force bond between the two will mess up the master's head better than any stab wound. If there's no whiny little Padawan, start shooting innocents - not to kill, just enough so that they're gonna die unless the Jedi does something to save them."_

"I've got all the case files on the Jedi and the facility," Atton murmured, shoving a full datapad towards her and quickly pulling out another. "Only thing left is to find Verte, wherever the hell that is—"

The door opened. Two Sith stopped dead in their tracks. One stared blankly at Sarii where she stood next to Atton with her half-constructed lightsaber in her hands.

The other was Janko. He only needed a second's glance at her to fix his narrow gaze on Atton.

"Rand," he breathed in disbelief. Atton stared back.

Sarii ripped the neural band off and slammed both Sith up against the wall.

One tumbled over the piles of confiscated items, knocking them over to spill across the floor, on top of him. He was buried under musty Jedi robes and half-glowing crystals, trying furiously to dig himself out.

"You?" Janko sputtered, only thrown slightly off balance by Sarii's Force push. The way he held his blaster was almost identical to the way Atton held his, trained on each other's foreheads.

Sarii tried to extend the half of the lightsaber she had managed to insert a crystal into. A faded lavender-colored beam came out halfway, sparking and flaring up as it struggled to balance itself.

"You were a Lieutenant! You had a perfect conversion rate…you hated the Jedi more than anyone else did!"

"Maybe I still do," Atton replied, firing. He missed and Janko lunged towards the pilot. Atton dived out from behind the computer console, narrowing evading the Sith's grasp.

But that put them at a disadvantage. The Sith was now at the console, and he pressed a number of buttons that made the floor begin to vibrate from the footsteps of a legion of Sith coming down the corridor towards them.

"You're gonna regret this," Janko spat, a twisted smile curling up from the corners of his mouth. "You'll never get tossed, buddy. We'll pass you around for months. Everyone'll have a turn."

"They might," Atton replied, returning the smile. "You won't." He fired again.

This time he didn't miss. Janko flew back against the wall, a large black scorch marring the middle of his bland clothing. He collapsed onto the floor.

Sarii followed the pilot as he exited the room and pounded code into the controls of the heavy black blast door that separated this side of Remli Prime from the other. The harsh light and the dull groan of the Force slowly coming back to life in her head made her dizzy.

They sprinted towards the dock; towards the _Hawk _and the _Chaser. _The _Chaser _was already lifting off, halfway out of the thin blue entry corridor.

Behind them the charging Sith reminded her of an invading swarm of Mandalorians; roaring and spitting and waving their blasters around as if the force of their anger alone might halt their escape. A few gun turrets hidden behind the grey panels of the docks began firing at both the _Hawk _and their feet. The shields around the ship flashed and rippled in waves of blue light as the blaster fire bounced harmlessly off the hull.

"Fracking—" Atton was swearing blue and green as a stray shot hit him in the ankle. He hopped unsteadily on one foot for a moment before Sarii shouldered him and helped him limp his way up the gangplank.

Mical came jogging up to them as they reentered the ship.

"Master Zhen, are you—"

"Fine, I'm fine," Sarii replied, removing Atton's arm from her shoulder and wrapping it around Mical's.

Her Padawan raised a skeptical eyebrow but nodded, either resolute or relieved or both. He began to drag Atton towards the sickbay.

"Are you crazy? We're in the middle of a damn escape! Take me to the cockpit!" the pilot snapped.

Mira was bent over the console, her red hair hiding the expression on her face. She didn't even glance up at Sarii as she slid into the co-pilot's chair. The _Ebon Hawk _began to lift off the ground, rattling from age and the stress of blaster fire and Mira's inexperience at piloting.

"_Ebon Hawk_, I'm really hoping you have the Exile back on board," Admiral Onasi broke in sharply over the comm. Sarii made a mental note to tell him there were going to be some grave repercussions if he called her the Exile one more time.

"I'm here, Admiral," she answered. Mical reached the cockpit with Atton and the pilot stood wavering over Mira, frowning impatiently and waiting for her to move.

Mira moved the _Ebon Hawk _towards the entry to the docks.

"You'd better get out of there," Onasi continued. "I think they're going to raise the—"

There was a loud, ominous backfiring from the rear of the ship, and the _Hawk_ struggled halfway in the thorny tunnel and halfway through the thin dock entrance before ripping itself free from the security field that the Remli Prime Sith had been a few seconds too late in activating.

"That didn't sound good," Mira breathed, pushing herself up and disappearing down the corridor.

"Took out our gun turret," Atton reported as he dropped clumsily into the pilot's chair.

"Let us hope that there will not be a need for it," Mical murmured, leaning against the back of Sarii's seat.

Tiny black dots that Sarii had first written off as spots from her abused vision or falling branches from the tunnel now grew larger. They sprouted two wings and began to spit red and green blaster fire at the _Chaser _where it hovered in front of them, swooping over and around the ship to slip between the _Hawk _and the dock they had just exited. They were trapped.

"You _had_ to say it, didn't you, Mical?" Atton muttered darkly.

The _Chaser_'s single turret was firing wildly away at the fighters blocking their half of the tunnel, but each time one was destroyed, another flew in to take its place. Creating flying, burning ship debris in close quarters near flammable branches was also not the safest of options.

"Mira, we kind of need that turret now," Sarii called back over her shoulder nervously.

"You're kind of not going to get it now!" the bounty hunter snapped back, loud enough to be heard clearly all the way from the back of the ship.

Helpless in their weaponless ship, Sarii could only watch the _Chaser _darting back and forth, trying to avoid the blaster fire of three fighters. The ship's turret stopped firing and she wondered if theirs had been damaged too.

To her surprise, it whirled around ninety degrees, arced upwards, and began firing at the thick tunnel of brown thorns surrounding them.

"Great. That'll definitely take out the fighters. It'll also take out _us _and them and anything else in this fracking tunnel…" Atton ranted. The _Hawk_'s control panel rattled in his hands as branch after branch fell from the sky and hit the ship's hull. Sarii could hear the thorns sliding and scraping their way to the edges of the ship and falling into the darkness below.

"At least Onasi's _doing_ something about it!" Mira bellowed from where she was digging around in the central room for tools.

Two more fighters joined the trio pummeling both ships with their fire. Patches of the blue-green sky above the dense forest of thorns began to poke through the sharp lines of the branches.

A loud, piercing alarm next to Sarii began screaming for attention.

"Our shields are almost depleted," Mical said. "We can't take much more damage—"

Without a word of warning, Atton savagely twisted his hands and the _Hawk _shot backwards. Sarii slammed back into her seat and clunked heads with Mical, who was flung forward at the same time.

"Admirals. Think they know everything," the pilot muttered as he squeezed hard around the controls and the _Hawk _broke straight through the partially-open hole at full speed.


	16. Chapter 15

"To say that Revan's little undercover operation is dangerous would be a pretty severe understatement, Padawan."

Visas nodded as she walked next to Master Jolee Bindo. The side of her face under her veil was growing hot and itchy in the sunlight through the western windows of the Jedi Temple.

While the Council had said as much when she had informed them of Celyn Onasi's second vision, they had not reached any conclusion. And while they had also said they needed more time to formulate a position on what Visas had told them, Master Bindo had other ideas.

"Is the girl all right?" Bindo asked. He was an odd glow; dark shades of brown and grey, occasionally blue and occasionally red but never either for very long.

"She is not physically damaged," Visas replied.

The old Jedi snorted. "I meant scared, Padawan Marr. Is she frightened or upset?"

Visas wondered why he was asking when they were on their way to see the child anyway— something the Miraluka was not looking forward to doing again.

After her last vision, Celyn had demanded that Visas "stop showing her Mommy like that". Visas had tried to explain to the child that she could not see Revan like anything without Celyn and that the little girl was producing these images on her own. The Miraluka hadn't known that that much noise could come out of something so small.

She had never been so grateful for her classes with the younger Padawans and apprentices the next morning. Obedient, studious little Padawans who sat quietly and absorbed whatever images came to mind without interruption or complaint—

Granted, none of the younglings were seeing images of their mothers dressed up like Sith torturing innocents.

"The child was…not pleased to see her mother in any capacity beyond the role of caretaker, if that is what you mean, Master," Visas finally said.

"Would you be?" Bindo retorted. He did not block his thoughts as heavily as most members on the Council did. Visas could sense his self-image clearly; bald and wrinkled, with a trim white beard that he occasionally stroked as they walked.

"Do you believe that Revan may become a threat to the Jedi Order again, Master? Do you believe she has fallen?"

"If she had fallen, she wouldn't need the makeup, would she?" the old Jedi snapped. He sighed heavily, clasping his hands behind his back.

"She's stayed true to the redeemed identity the Jedi built up for her for almost a decade now. Now me, if I was going to fall back, I would have done it a long time ago. But that could just be an old man's wishful thinking."

The air among the Council members had been thick and humid, heavy with this new threat to worry about; the danger of Revan's intentions becoming muddled through her methods.

"Now, perhaps it might be best if you hang back for a minute, Padawan Marr," Bindo murmured as they neared the apprentice dormitories. "You're probably akin to the boogeyman for Celyn at this point."

Visas complied and stopped just outside the doorway. By this time of day, all the younger apprentices would be finishing up their exercises and preparing to return to their dormitories. The long room filled with sparse beds and nightstands, however, was entirely empty save for Celyn Onasi, sitting on the floor between two beds.

Master Bindo was only able to see the top of the child's head, but Visas's vision was not restricted by inanimate objects. Through the dull grey outlines of the wall and the bedframe she could see a few unidentifiable parts being hurriedly gathered up by the little girl and shoved underneath the bed.

Celyn stood, poking her head of brown curls up to see who had entered the room.

"Jolee!" she exclaimed happily, running up to him. The old Jedi mussed her hair.

"My, my, and not a glob of grease on her. What kind of respectable Jawa isn't at least a little dirty, eh?"

The little girl smirked like she knew something Bindo didn't. Visas was willing to bet it had something to do with the parts shoved under the bed.

"So, how do you like the Jedi Temple?" the old Jedi continued, sitting down on the edge of one of the beds, Visas could hear the barely audible crack of his knees. "You having fun around here?"

"It's boring," Celyn answered. "Everybody leaves in the morning and they don't come back until nighttime, and when they play they play with the Force and I don't know how so I can't play with them."

"At home I'm the _only _kid with the Force," the little girl added begrudgingly.

Bindo chuckled, putting his hands on both knees.

"Well, I'll tell you what, kiddo- those apprentices are mostly around the same age as you. And yeah, they're learning about the Force because they'll be Jedi someday. But since they're young they're also learning more rudimentary things, like reading and writing and basic math and all the other stuff you were probably just starting to learn on Telos. You've been out of school for long enough; you can start going to those lessons."

"I still can't play with them," Celyn muttered.

"Oh, I bet you could follow a couple of the training classes as well as any of the apprentices too," the old Jedi added. "I'm pretty sure your pop wouldn't kill me if I let you learn how to float a datapad or something harmless like that. You could surprise your mom when she gets back."

The child brightened at the suggestion.

"Father promised he'd bring her back."

Bindo's amused smile fell, and he looked seriously at the little girl.

"Listen, squirt, I want to explain something to you. You listening?"

Celyn nodded. Bindo reached out and grasped the child's shoulder.

"Your dad's been through a lot in his life, Celyn. Falling in love with your mother fixed him when he was kind of broken. So finding her is very important to him. Because he loves her, he's not willing to accept some things. And he made a promise to you that he shouldn't have made."

Celyn Onasi looked horrified.

"No, no tantrums now," Bindo said firmly. "You're a brave girl, I know you are."

For a moment, Visas thought the little girl would be her usual stubborn self; squirm out of the old Jedi Master's grip and go tearing through the halls of the Jedi Temple to sulk somewhere.

But instead, Celyn took a deep breath and bit her lip, clasping her hands quietly behind her and looking up at Bindo, almost cringing like she knew what was coming.

"Now I can't tell you whether your mother's coming back or not. No one can see what she's doing out there except for you, and you can only see it when Padawan Visas helps you. Tell me, Celyn, what do you think your mother's doing?"

"She's trying to fight Sith," the little girl replied automatically. "She doesn't want them to come back here and hurt people. But…she's doing bad things to keep people from doing bad things."

Visas could feel the child trying to make sense of this in her head and becoming frustrated at the fact that she couldn't.

"Visas…" The Miraluka heard her name quiet and soft from Celyn Onasi's lips like she was a fearsome monster of legend or a hero to grace the archives of the Jedi. "Visas said Mommy was only pretending to be bad, and that she doesn't really want to do those things. Is that true?"

"Well, Celyn, tell me: who's the only one who might be able to answer that question?"

"Me," the little girl answered. Bindo nodded.

"That's right. And if you want to know what's happening to her and what she's doing, you'll have to keep working with Padawan Visas to try and see her."

Visas took that as her cue to step into the doorway of the apprentice dormitories and slowly make her way towards the old Jedi Master and Celyn Onasi.

The little girl's emotions and facial expression were trying to be politely grateful, like she had expected candy and gotten vegetables.

"Be good, kiddo," Bindo added as he pushed himself up from the bed with a grunt.

_She's all yours, Padawan, _the old Jedi added to the Miraluka as he passed her. Celyn leaned over to the side, peering around Visas and watching Bindo until he had disappeared around the corner.

"It appears as though you may have less time to spend with me in the future," Visas said, tilting her head downwards towards the child.

"It's okay," the little girl shrugged. "I like school."

She stood there in front of Visas for a moment, twisting her hands around in front of her and shifting her weight from foot to foot.

"You want to see something?" Celyn offered with a mischievous smile. She turned around and hurried back over to where she had been sitting between the two beds. Visas followed, kneeling next to the little girl where she was half buried underneath the bed.

Celyn Onasi pulled out the parts of the object she had disassembled- one of the small apprentice lightsabers.

"At home I'm not allowed to touch these," Celyn whispered loudly. "Mommy says they're dangerous. She hides hers and Dustil always has his with him. But I was really careful."

Visas gently pawed through the empty hilt, the broken lens emitter that the girl must have forced out, the crystal lying on the marble floor, no longer glowing.

"Your mother is correct. You should not have chosen this particular piece of equipment to take apart."

Celyn frowned, gathering up the pieces and snatching the lens emitter out of Visas's hand like the Miraluka might take them all away from her.

"I was _going_ to put it back," the little girl muttered under her breath. "I always put things back together."

Celyn sat back on her heels, looking around the room for something else she might show Visas.

"Do you do the same thing with all the other kids?" the little girl finally asked. "Do they try to watch people too?"

"In a way," Visas replied. "Sometimes I lead guided meditations where the children sit and try to grasp images and block them much as you and I have done. None of them have received any from so far away through a familial bond, however."

Celyn nodded. "It's kind of like Mommy's sending me letters."

"Father and Dustil sent me a letter," she added, leaning towards Visas and grinning like it was a secret she wasn't supposed to tell.

_Does the child want me to _read_ it to her? _the Miraluka thought incredulously, wondering why the little girl hadn't yet asked about the veil covering her face—

"I ­know how to _read_," Celyn interrupted sharply, frowning. "I'm five years old."

The little girl's complete disregard for the privacy of a sentient's thoughts was becoming irritating, although Visas could not entirely blame the child. She had never been taught, after all, that the Force was not simply something you had and used at your whim.

"You become extremely upset when someone implies you don't know how to do something," the Miraluka remarked.

"I don't like it when I don't know things." The child's voice was a soft lilt, a recitation of something someone had told her before. "I don't like it when I can't understand stuff."

Celyn Onasi reached under the bed again- apparently her secret hiding place –and pulled out the datapad.

"It's not the kind of letter you read anyways."

Without asking Visas whether or not she cared to listen, the little girl placed it flat on the floor between them and pressed a button.

_"Jedi Knight Dustil Onasi, transmitting from the _Jedi Chaser_," _a young man's voice began, giving the standard codes so that the message would make it successfully through the Temple's scramblers and interceptors. _"…go ahead, Father."_

_"Sorry it took so long, sweetheart," _an older man began. His voice sounded like it should have been seamless and smooth if only he could get the barely noticeable scratching out of his throat. _"Me and Dustil have been a little busy lately, but that doesn't mean we forgot about you. How's my Jawa? I know it's probably rough being around all those Jedi, but don't worry, Celyn. We're…really close to finding Mommy—"_

Visas had never met Carth Onasi, nor had she ever heard his voice before. It was years of listening that told her it was an outright lie that they were close to finding Revan.

Celyn Onasi didn't react to it beyond burrowing further into her shoulders and the warmth of her father's voice. Either she didn't recognize the deception or she chose to ignore it.

_"I promise we'll be home soon, Jawa. Until then, be good and don't break anything at the Temple," _the Admiral said, laughing through the intermittent static and degradation that a message transmitted from the depths of space to the Core worlds accumulated._ "Breaking something of the Jedi's would probably cost a lot of credits. I'll bring you something to take apart and I'll have lots of stories for you when we get back. Love you, Celyn. Here's your brother."_

_"Guess we can't make fun of Father in our heads this time," _Dustil Onasi added. _"He's pretty naïve to think you haven't broken anything already. Go fix it, huh? And, um, give Tova a hug or something for me, will you? See you soon, Jawa."_

The recorded message ended with a loud, clear beep.

"They're not close to finding Mommy, are they?" Celyn murmured, looking up at Visas. "Mommy would know, wouldn't she? She always knows when Father or Dustil are coming home before they get there."

"You know of the only way to find out," the Miraluka replied calmly. Celyn nodded, squinting her eyes shut.

The little girl was getting better at finding the images of Revan on her own; Visas had to do very little searching before she found the former Dark Lord exactly where she and the child had left her.

_As always, she hesitated. Her heart pounded against her ribs. She thought of pulling out her lightsaber and slicing Sila's head off. She thought of how she could cut swathes through the entire complex if she were so inclined, stop this before it spread any further._

Then you really will be one of them. You really will be what you were.

The Dark Lord Revan, because killing solves everything.

_Katrina thought of overdoing a flash of lightning, maybe putting the poor Force-sensitive man before her out of his misery (he was practically fried from her last attack anyways). She thought of outright refusal._

_Because this was getting to be too much._

_The evening before she'd sat on her ship tapping the edges of her fingers on the top of the desk. The surface was littered with half-filled datapads of her findings for the Order, parts of her lightsaber, eyedroplets and stims for her disguise. Her coloring was already beginning to fade- the greys were turning back to a pale ivory, and by morning she would look like her old self again._

_She was curled up in the red and gold Anellian shawl Carth had bought her a few years ago. It was her favorite present from him. The irony of finally being willing to face her past yet being exiled from the planet of her birth had not been lost on her all those years. And Phineas was reluctant to discuss anything that had happened before he'd become successful again on Chael—_

"Uncle Phinny's funny," the child commented. "Can Mommy see me too?"

"It does not appear so," Visas replied. "I do not believe she is even aware that you are watching her."

"I bet if Mommy knew I could see her she wouldn't look so scary," the little girl reflected.

_She didn't know why she didn't just let herself think of them- Carth, Celyn, Dustil -everywhere. There was absolutely no reason to believe the Sith (or the Jedi, as long as that was what they were calling themselves) couldn't sense her just as easily outside the complex on her ship as they could inside of it standing amongst them._

_But it really was impossible _not _to think of them when she got back here and there was T3 and HK and her dreams, which she had no hope of controlling. She had to sleep _sometime_, after all._

_Every night Katrina compiled what HK brought her, wrote down what techniques, if any, she had learned or performed on someone, and wondered if it was enough. And each day she convinced herself it wasn't, woke up in the morning and turned back into Lord Revan._

_Half of it was just denial; telling herself that she still didn't know enough about this place to leave it behind with a clear conscience was really just trying to ignore the fact that she didn't know how she was going to leave._

_By now they had to have known that she was not what she appeared to be, if they hadn't sensed it the second she'd come walking in, almost trembling underneath her black armor with an un-mind-wiped HK at her side, struggling to hide things with the only techniques the Jedi knew- primitive compared to what she had seen here._

_Besides her assassin droid popping up in unauthorized places and letting her mind wander freely each night on her ship, Katrina tempted fate every time a ship landed from Remli Prime or elsewhere._

_As Malak had told her, they did not know the way to Republic space. They had no coordinates, no star maps, no navigational devices. Any ships they had stayed strictly in the Unknown Regions._

_But she had given them the means to send messages. And the messages they sent reached other enterprising Sith and bounty hunters in the Outer Rim, on worlds like Remli Prime. Sith and bounty hunters who were more than capable of rounding up Force sensitives and Jedi to send back for conversion._

_While they didn't seem overly interested or equipped to begin a mass scale assault on the Republic or the Order, they were actively seeking how to reach both. Each time a ship landed Katrina would destroy the homing devices and tracking equipment before the Sith or bounty hunter vessels left._

_She could not do anything about the Force users they brought in. Robust, self-righteous Jedi fresh from failed attempts on Remli Prime were dropped off here confident that after that planet, they could face anything._

_Katrina had smirked, rolling her eyes at the memory of the overly buff Evzen trying to make her want revenge on herself. Remli Prime had been like a crash course in being a Jedi again. Because face it: you didn't exactly get much practice living on Citadel Station with a four-year-old and a Republic Admiral whose biggest occasional crisis nowadays was losing his hat._

_She missed them. Even Dustil. It was hard to remember at night with her shawl and her droids and her dreams why she had ever left—_

You were no good to them like that, _she told herself._

_She had tried for months to deny it. It was easy to make resolutions to leave, to go on death-defying missions of incredible bravery against some mysterious Sith threat in the Unknown Regions when Celyn was just a voice in her dreams, a foot pushing against her stomach._

_But once Celyn had brown curls and she was giggling and standing all by herself and running around on her shaky little legs and trying to repeat words and calling her "Mommy" outside of the subconscious, resolutions suddenly seemed a lot easier to forget, to put off._

But you were no good to her like that, _Katrina repeated, wrapping herself up tighter in her shawl. _Good mothers aren't sad all the time. Good mothers don't scare their little girls.

_All it took was two words to convince her._

Katrina started screaming, shrieking at the top of her lungs.

_The soldier grasped the edges of her robes, pleading with his empty eyesockets for her to grant some mercy. Lightning danced merrily into his chest—_

Carth's head lifted from where he was sprawled on the floor, having fallen off the edge of the bed, startled out of sleep by her explosive awakening. He pushed himself up with a groan, quickly moving back onto the bed to lean over her.

"Fracking hell, Katrina—" His voice was shaking worse than his hands on her shoulders. His hair was sticking up all over his head.

_Begging me, begging me for their lives and I took them away—_

"Katrina," Carth repeated, still groggy, forgetting her name, slurring his words as his fear and worry and irritation washed over her, slimy like the lining on a Selkath's head. "Stop it, gorgeous. It was just a nightmare—"

She hadn't had a nightmare like this in years. She hadn't woken up screaming like this since before she'd made him call her Revan. The two facts slowly seeped in but they did nothing to stop her.

"Shh, beautiful, it was only a dream…you're going to—"

Another, different kind of sound cut through both his voice and her high, piercing shrieks. It was crying, the most familiar crying Katrina knew.

_You're going to wake up Celyn._

She instantly stopped, holding out her arms for the little bundle of trembling curls and wide brown eyes and little salty tears who had heard her mother screaming bloody murder and come running. Whether she had shared the dream or not Katrina didn't know.

"It's all right, Celyn," Katrina called, trying to make her voice less hoarse, more gentle, trying to make her breathing even.

Celyn whimpered and shrunk back. Carth glanced at Katrina and pushed himself to sit at the foot of the bed, away from her. Celyn ran to him, turning her face away from Katrina, burying it in Carth's chest.

"Jawa, it's all right," he repeated. "Mommy's just scared. She had a bad dream. You have bad dreams sometimes. It's the same thing—"

He tried to put her in Katrina's outstretched arms.

"No," Celyn wailed, trying to climb up over Carth's shoulder, wrapping her legs around his ribs and her hands around his neck. "Mommy's scary."

_The tears hadn't come then—_

Celyn Onasi's lower lip quivered and then twisted into a frown.

"I…_I _made Mommy leave?" she said, more dumbfounded than sad or afraid. Visas realized that this idea had never occurred to the little girl. "I didn't want her to leave—"

"A combination of factors made your mother leave," the Miraluka rushed to assure her. "Her guilt over frightening you was only one of them."

_Celyn had awoken the next morning and was perfectly willing to be held by Katrina. A day or so and she couldn't even remember what had happened. The tears hadn't come then, but the resolutions had._

You were no good to them like that_, she reminded herself fiercely._

Good mothers don't scare their little girls. Good wives don't wake their husbands up in the middle of the night, screaming because they remember all the men they've killed. Good people don't just leave in the middle of something big that could save the Jedi Order and protect the Republic, even if they are in way over their heads and scared to death that if they don't get out soon, they may never be able to.

_All she'd been wondering these past few months was why if they knew she was not Lord Revan, still in command of the Sith in Republic-controlled space, they hadn't just killed her. Or captured her and tried to convert her like everyone else. And the only conclusion she could come to was that they thought they _could _convert her— without any manipulation at all. _

_Without giving her visions of Carth and Celyn and Dustil dying somehow without the saving grace of violence and revenge, without showing her how things might have turned out better if she had just killed someone or given into the more angry urges she had had during the Star Forge mission. _

_It was an uneasy balance between both parties suspecting what the other's true intentions were and still trying to meet their own objectives. She was beginning to get the feeling that she was an experiment for them—and their control was that they knew she would not leave._

_For one, if she tried to leave they might just kill her after all. For another, they might decide to convert her the old fashioned way. And if she saw visions like Dustil had, without anyone around to pull her out of it, there would be no coming back for her. Not again._

And if you die, right here on the cold black floor a million parsecs from home, what will that accomplish? If you die because this isn't right, if you die because you refuse to do this—

_It wouldn't stop anything. These Sith would continue their work. This would go on until they reached Republic space, until they reached the Order. And the Order would fall into extinction, into darkness, unable to stand against a threat they knew nothing about. All because she wanted to die a Jedi._

And which is more selfish? That I crushed the galaxy once because I was Lord Revan, or that I'd let it be crushed again because I want to be Jedi Revan?

You left them for this. Don't let it be in vain-

Not yet, _she hissed at herself. The Force-sensitive had pushed himself up from the floor, from under her lightning. He stood dazed and confused, unable to know that she was mired in her thoughts from the night before and momentarily distracted from what she was supposed to be doing to him._

_Katrina felt Sila's calm, steady gaze on the back of her black hood. She knew he would consider this another victory, another push back down the dark path for her._

_She knew that he was partially right._

_She looked for the stimuli Sila had mentioned; the things she had in common with this man. She found the Force sensitive's memory of his daughter, a young accident that he loved intensely despite getting him kicked out of some prestigious academy. She made the daughter grow up. She made the daughter a Jedi- not Sila's kind, but hers. _

_She made the daughter die—_

Visas hesitated, cutting off the flow of images for a moment. Was it right to expose the child to more of this? She had been put among the Jedi to be protected, and the Miraluka was beginning to fear that the sight of Revan had already scarred the little girl beyond words—

"It's okay," Celyn said softly, cracking one eye open and then the other. "Mommy's good. I know she's good."

But seeing the white glow around the child's face, feeling the loneliness that tasted so familiar and the stubborn hope that was entirely new, Visas knew it would be worse if she left the child alone with only the pain of both Revan and her victims for comfort.

"I won't cry, I promise," the little girl added, closing her eyes again. Visas knew what the weight of a promise was to Celyn Onasi.

Okay, _Katrina thought._ Now.

Don't think about how Celyn used to ask you each morning if you were gone yet, and you would reply that you were, and she would get right up in your face with her little brown eyes and her crinkled nose and you would spring awake and wrap your arms around her-

_The Force sensitive saw only the Jedi robes his daughter wore, saw only that she died. He saw nothing of whatever killed her in the vision. In his mind, in the future that she showed him, the equation only went from passivity and inaction to death._

_She had one more moment._

Don't think about how he had morning rituals with you too, although they weren't as innocent; how he would kiss you and you would open your eyes and murmur, "Morning, Admiral" and he would reply "Morning, gorgeous"-

_The Force sensitive's eyes opened. They were a mottled shade of orange._

_"Lord Revan," he wheezed, unable to make it a low murmur or a standard greeting to one of his new commanders._

I'm sorry-

Sorry for what? _Sila's voice in her head was sharp and unforgiving, despite her success._

Sorry I could not convert him sooner, _she replied smoothly. _It's all a matter of finding the right subject. Discovering what it is that means the most to him, what he could lose by choosing the wrong side.

He would lose his daughter. A precious thing, _the Sith Lord answered._

_She cleared her mind of the words 'daughter' and 'precious', made herself forget what they meant. _

_She allowed herself one moment of weakness when she was in their presence. That moment could only be when she was sufficiently buried enough in the mind of another to hide it from Sila and the others._

_Those moments were only when she was doing the most horrible of things- when she was converting good men and women into Sith._


	17. Chapter 16

The pocket of his jacket was vibrating against his chest, and Carth struggled for several seconds to balance what he was carrying in one arm while trying to free the other to answer the ringing comlink.

Dustil just stood watching with his own bundle of supplies.

"You want to wipe that smirk off your face and help me?" Carth said, exasperated, laughing in spite of himself.

His son put his bundle down and moved to take his father's as Carth pulled out the comlink and flipped it open.

The spaceport's background noise was a soft rumble that made him feel like his boots were vibrating against a moving floor. Krett was definitely the busiest planet they'd found so far. A steady stream of shoppers, other spacers, officials from the planet's port authority and probably security force officers passed them where they stood in the middle of a long, tan corridor that connected the docks to the rest of the city of Nantu.

"The _Hawk_'s landed," Carth informed Dustil.

His son nodded blithely, watching another of the humanoid creatures with long, flat flapping stalks attached to the tops of their heads go by. Carth had seen so many of them that he was beginning to think they must be the Krettans, or Kretti, or whatever they called themselves.

Dustil hadn't said much since they'd landed. Dustil hadn't said much in general since a few nights ago. Another fight. Another argument. They hadn't had one in a while, but each time felt as familiar as Fleet protocol- something with a set routine you had to go through now and then like clockwork, to keep the machine running smooth.

Carth hadn't even meant to provoke him. He had just been having trouble sleeping. That was nothing new.

_He had been awake all night, grunting in frustration, pounding the pillow into yet another shapeless form and twisting around, trying to find a more comfortable position. The motions had only served to get his legs twisted up in the sheets, and he finally lay flat on his back with his hands at his side, sighing._

_Sleeping in a bed alone…eight years ago, maybe, it might have felt normal, if unnatural. Lying tangled up in the abrasive sheets that were standard issue on a starship with only the cold cycle of the _Chaser_'s air filters for company, however, definitely did not feel normal._

_It felt empty._

_He'd been in Admiral-mode for the better part of the last two weeks; preparing messages and coordinates to send back to the Republic. He'd written official reports on the capabilities and available resources of Remli Prime. He'd worked with the Exile via comm channel on making sure the lists of lost Jedi were organized and complete to send back to the Order. With any luck, the Republic would send a contingent out soon to shut the entire place down and arrest the Sith conversion artists and former assassins._

_But he wouldn't be on that mission. Because he hadn't found Katrina yet._

_They hadn't gotten the coordinates for Verte. So they were back to a slow drift through the Unknown Regions, following the trail of the homing device he'd stuck on her ship to where it had abruptly stopped transmitting. _

Damn that droid_, Carth had thought grumpily, imagining one of the several ways he eventually planned to dismantle HK. _She never would have found it without him. She doesn't know anything about alluvial dampers, let alone where they are-

_He wondered where she had been when she destroyed it, or shut it off, or let HK shoot it like she said she had. Was she just in the middle of dead space, without a planet for a couple hundred parsecs in any direction? Was she just outside this Verte place the Sith on Remli Prime had supposedly tried to send her to?_

_Was she all right?_

_Carth rolled over on his side, blowing air up against his face to try and get the hair out of his eyes. The strands moved in inches across his forehead until he got frustrated and pushed them back with his hand._

_Katrina always slept draped over him, practically on top of him, practically using him as the bed instead of the actual mattress. It had gotten annoying after a few years, to the point that he would let her fall asleep like that and then untangle himself. It wasn't that he didn't like holding her; it was just hard to sleep sometimes when there was a limb or two wrapped around you—_

_And now he was feeling bad for every time he'd pushed her over to the other side of the bed, every time he'd gotten in a fight with her, every time he'd called her Revan with venom behind his teeth. _

This isn't your fault_, he told himself lamely. He knew why she'd left. He knew why putting the Fleet on alert and trying to lock her in the Citadel wouldn't have made things any better._

_"There's nothing wrong with you, Carth," she'd said one night before she left, touching his neck with those feather-light fingers, barely there and fluttering against his skin. "I'm not trying to punish you or Celyn. This isn't about you—"_

_"You're right, gorgeous," he'd replied evenly. "You're only punishing yourself."_

"I think Rand's angling for a cantina trip," Carth said as Dustil handed him the bundle of supplies, taking his own up again as they turned and continued towards the _Jedi Chaser_'s dock. "Maybe we could use one."

"Frack the cantina. All I need is a drink," Dustil muttered. His bundle was so large that he had to tilt his head back so that his chin would rest on top of it.

Carth frowned but kept his mouth shut. Admittedly they were probably all overdue for a drink or two. There were things that needed forgetting.

_He missed her arms tossed over his chest or his back or sandwiched between his bicep and ribs. He missed her nails scratching his skin in her sleep and her legs wrapped around him or tangled up with his. He missed getting strands of her hair in his mouth as he was yawning. He missed the heat of her body making him sticky and uncomfortable underneath both her and the blankets._

Yeah, Onasi. This is definitely going to help you sleep_, he thought, mashing a fist into the pillow again._

_When it became clear that he had successfully replaced his fatigue with restless irritation, Carth had pushed himself out of bed, rubbing his temples and padding out of the captain's quarters._

_Dustil sat in the cockpit with his feet propped up on the console, clad in sleeping pants and his brown Jedi robe. A half-eaten pack of rations balanced on his legs._

_"Can't sleep either, huh?" Carth had murmured, dropping into the chair next to him._

_"Not with what you're thinking about."_

_"Sorry," Carth added with an unapologetic smirk. "Can't you just think of Tova and cancel my thoughts out or something?"_

_"Tova's not conducive to sleep." Dustil shoveled another bite of the bland rations into his mouth. A few crumbs fell off of the fork onto his son's bare chest._

_Carth decided not to tease him anymore. He'd been pretty merciless earlier when Dustil had recorded his letter to his fiancé after they'd finished the one to Celyn. _

_"What?" Dustil had demanded as Carth chuckled and folded his arms, watching his son as he finished sending the letter._

_"Shouldn't you have told her you missed her?"_

_He'd left the room, of course, when Dustil had begun his letter to Tova to give his son some privacy. He'd listened right outside the doorway too._

_Dustil had begun all right; calling her "Miss Vin", using that cocky I-know-I'm-the-greatest-thing-since-orange-juma-juice voice to make jokes and ask her how she was. But then his son had launched into an extended report on their trip: the landing on Teren (he'd made a rambling mess out of the barfight story trying to turn it into the level-headed Jedi Knight Dustil Onasi restraining the out-of-control pilot Atton Rand); his capture by the crew of the _Screamer_; and their daring escape from Remli Prime. _

_"She knows I miss her," his son had replied, cocking an eyebrow at Carth like he didn't know the first thing about girls._

_"Yeah," Carth acknowledged. "But she might like to hear it."_

_"Tova would like a good scoop on the Unknown Regions better than me going all beautiful and gorgeous-y on her."_

_Carth had only rolled his eyes. Someone would have to set the barfight record straight with his future daughter-in-law when they got back._

_"We're almost out of rations," Dustil mumbled between his chewing._

_"Yeah…I guess I figured this trip would be a lot shorter," Carth said, sighing and rubbing his eye with the heel of his palm. "We'll have to stop at the next planet we find and pick up more supplies."_

_"And better food," his son added, making a face, pulling the fork out of his mouth and inspecting it like it was somehow to blame._

_"I'm sorry, Dustil. I really didn't intend on being out here this long. I thought…well, I don't know…" Carth trailed off. "I guess I thought finding her would be easier than it's turning out to be."_

_Somewhere in the past few years he'd started to believe again that if he wanted something hard enough, it was going to happen._

Carrying the supplies of rations, blaster maintenance parts, hyperdrive tools and other assorted odds and ends became a juggling act again as Carth lowered the gangplank to the _Chaser _with his free thumb and maneuvered himself and the bundle up into the ship and towards the cargo hold. The _Chaser_'s hold was more like a small closet, but it was big enough for the job since the ship only ever carried passengers anyway.

He watched Dustil stack things on top of each other, his face bland and expressionless.

"I don't think this ship's ever had so much junk on it," Carth murmured, rubbing his hands together.

"She'll have a lot of parsecs on her stardometer after this," Dustil added, finishing with the supplies and closing the door to the hold.

Whenever 'this' ended. Somewhere in the past few years, he'd started to believe again that endings usually turned out happily.

_Dustil leaned over, dropping the tray with the remains of his meal onto the floor. His son's arms had dangled against the side of the pilot's chair, watching the stars go by with a frown on his face._

_"If we do find her, Father—"_

When_, when _we find her_—_

_"You might not be able to just pick her up and head back towards Republic space. There might be…things might be different."_

_"Different how?" Carth said, narrowing his eyes._

_"They're supposedly the most powerful Sith left in the galaxy. You do the math."_

_It was his meeting with Dodonna all over again. _Don't tell him that all these years you've been terrified by the fact that you've never suspected Katrina_- Revan _of anything. Don't tell him that the fact that you trust her completely and love her unreservedly scares the hell out of you.

_"She's not going to do that, Dustil. No matter what they—"_

_"They can be very convincing."_

_Dustil's body was a little stiff; the muscles in his chest tightening with whatever memories were being relived. Carth hesitated before asking his next question. _

_He always hesitated before bringing up Korriban._

_"How…did they make you turn?"_

_Dustil's head rose sharply and he stared at Carth. He could already see those careful strings of Jedi control tightening around his son's face._

_"They didn't make me. I chose to join them."_

_"They had to have done something to convince you. What was it? Did they…torture you or threaten you or—"_

_"You don't understand," his son said firmly. "I was angry, Father. I was angry at you and the galaxy and the Republic for not saving…Telos. I wanted to make sure no one could ever do that to me or…or anyone else I cared about again. All the Sith had to do was point me in the right direction."_

_"No, I don't believe that, Dustil—"_

_"You don't have to believe it. It's what happened," Dustil interrupted._

_"I got asked to join the Sith—" _

_"__Really?__" His son forced the word through his tightly closed mouth, looking away, up toward a bulkhead that didn't have any buttons or controls on it._

"_By Saul," Carth added sharply._

_The man was dead. There was no reason why saying his name should hurt anymore, no reason at all—_

"_You remember Admiral Karath? He knew me before you were born, before I met your mother, when I was younger than you are now. He knew us for years. He used to bring you decommissioned rank pins and junk from the Fleet, remember?"_

_Dustil nodded. There was something faraway in his eyes that hadn't been there when Carth had called Karath 'Saul' instead of Admiral._

_"I trusted him. Hell, I…I almost believed him when he said the Republic was weakening. But I still said no—"_

_"I _get it_, Father," his son hissed. "You're a better person than I am—"_

_"No, that's not what I meant at all..." Carth sighed, rubbing his forehead. "I just don't understand how anyone could join up with the Sith after everything you learned, no matter how angry or hurt or lost you might have felt. To just give up everything else for a cheap, easy, wrong solution…I might not have been around much, but I didn't teach you that, Dustil. Your mother didn't teach you that either—"_

_"You have _no_ idea what it was like, Father, so just shut your fracking mouth," Dustil replied icily._

Now, three days later, the awkward silence still lingered as Dustil folded his arms and Carth continued to rub his hands together, if only for some kind of sound to break the long pause—

"What _do _you like to drink, Dustil?" Carth said finally, raising an eyebrow. He hadn't thought of his son in terms of having an ale at the local cantina yet. The older Dustil got, the harder it was for Carth to see him in terms of anything beyond the grinning kid with mussed brown hair who used to pretend to drive a speeder with him on the plains of Telos.

"None of that fruity mixed junk they serve at those stupid HoloNet parties Tova drags me to," Dustil said, making a face. "I don't care what she says— we're having plain old Corellian Whiskey at _my _wedding."

"Good," Carth nodded, breaking into a smile. "Cheaper for me."

Dustil getting married, thoughts of home. Happy stuff. Topics that weren't going to lead to that hard look on his son's face—

_Carth felt the back of his throat tighten— insulted, hurt. Being irritable from lack of sleep and missing his wife probably wasn't helping in dealing with his half-dressed twentysomething ex-Sith son. He narrowed his eyes disapprovingly at Dustil like he was a mouthy twelve-year-old again._

_"I don't care how old you are, Dustil Onasi. You don't talk to me like that—"_

_"You know, not once since Korriban have I asked you what the frack you were thinking jumping into bed with Revan, Father," Dustil snapped. "Not _once_."_

You have no idea what it was like, Dustil, falling in love with her and then finding out—

_The disgust in his son's glare was sadly familiar. They'd had a whole series of these conversations years ago, and they'd all turned out the same way. Something small would set Dustil off and they would get into a shouting match over Katrina until Dustil stormed away and returned the next morning with a grudging apology and his Jedi control like glue over his features. There was just no resolution, no way to end it. It played over and over again like a malfunctioning holocron._

"_Revan, the Jedi who turned against the Republic and destroyed Telos," his son spat, pushing himself out of the pilot's chair, his fists clenched. Carth rose with him. "You remember Telos, Father? Not now, not when it's half rebuilt and everything's green and pretty and people can pretend nothing ever happened. How about when the bombing started and everyone was dead or dying and the buildings were all in ruins and there were Sith storming through the rubble taking whoever and whatever they could?"_

_"Oh right, I forgot- you _weren't there_!" Dustil snarled, throwing his arm up in the air; his face so close to Carth's that tiny dots of spit landed on his nose._

_The automatic Fleet officer in him, seeing a hot-head and knowing he had to do something about it made Carth reach out and grip his son's bicep. Dustil shoved him off, turning his back. _

_"I thought…you…" Carth trailed off weakly. _

_"What, you thought I _forgave_ her?" Dustil interrupted witheringly, glancing over his shoulder. "She teaches me a couple of Jedi tricks and makes me laugh now and then and I'm supposed to completely forget about what she did to Mom?"_

'_Mom' rung off the metal bulkheads of the _Jedi Chaser_ and echoed 'Morgana' in Carth's head. His son stared at whatever blank expression was on his face and sighed heavily. _

_"I'm not helping you find her because I miss her. She's my Master, but…look, the only reason the Council made her my Master was to force me not to kill her. Between Master Juhani and everything else, they didn't think the…thing between the two of you would be enough to stop me."_

_Dustil ran both of his hands up to rub his eyes and then back through his hair._

_"They might have been right. I don't know anymore. If I had to choose between Revan and…and Mekel Jin," he sputtered, grasping for a name. "I'd choose Mekel every time. But you need her and Celyn needs her, and that's more important than me and…."_

_His son stopped before reaching whatever words had been hanging on his lips._

"_Being a Jedi means I'm through with anger and hatred and revenge," he finished quietly. "It doesn't mean I have to forgive her."_

_Carth watched him turn and pad silently back down the corridor to bed, the edges of his brown robe catching in the steady stream of air from the _Chaser_'s conduits and trailing after him. _

I feel like I'm failing him all over again_. He waited for her fingers on the back of his neck, her calm, no-nonsense assurances that he wasn't. There was no answer. All she was now was absence. The return of that ache in his chest he'd thought he'd gotten rid of years ago._

_He was running out of time. Dustil had a life that Carth wanted to watch him live. There was Celyn, the Fleet, and Telos waiting for him back home. He couldn't stay out here forever._

_How good of a father, Admiral, or leader he would be without Katrina was another story entirely._

_Carth grasped the back of the pilot's chair, turning it towards him and sitting down. He folded his arms and closed his eyes._

I'll find her soon_, he told himself as he drifted off_. Then I'm going to drag her back home and never let her out of my sight again.

_Then, after three tense days, they'd found Krett. The _Ebon Hawk _hadn't been far behind._

The sound of familiar voices echoed up the gangplank, and Carth and Dustil went to meet them.

The crew of the _Ebon Hawk _waited. Mical stood behind his Master. Carth noticed a fading scar on the side of Sarii's neck. The bounty hunter Mira had her arms folded, taking in the outside of the _Chaser _(immaculate compared to the _Hawk_) and whistled, obviously impressed. Atton Rand had one arm leaned up against the side of the ship, that cocky smirk on his face.

Carth groaned inwardly. He had a feeling the former Sith assassin was going to milk breaking them out of that tunnel on Remli Prime for all that it was worth.

"Now I know you've probably got some grand plans for snooping around and asking a lot of questions and generally making us as conspicuous as possible, Admiral," Rand began, still leaned up against the ship. _My ship_. Carth resisted the urge to push the pilot's arm off and then scrub the part of the hull he'd touched just to make a point.

"I should probably stop trusting my gut after all this time, but Krett isn't Sith central. It looks pretty average. Aside from all the sweating you had to do to make us land on it, pilot-boy," Mira remarked, shooting a queasy glare at Rand.

Carth winced, remembering his own entry into the planet's atmosphere. The city they'd landed in- Nantu –reminded him more of Taris than Coruscant. There were a lot of buildings, but they weren't high-risers or vast, expansive forests of duracrete that covered the planet's surface. For one thing, the hurricane-like winds that blew through the atmosphere would likely level anything taller than a Citadel Station module. The city of Nantu was a series of large, open areas connected by long corridors with skylights. Occasionally you could see pieces of debris from failed landings or uprooted plants pass through the transparisteel windows, blowing wild in the gusts outside, clean-up droids that must have been magnetized to the buildings scurrying to clean the debris off the roofs.

Landing required precise entry at the exact moment the port authority told you to approach, without any creative deviation. Even then Carth felt like he was arm wrestling a Wookiee trying to keep the _Chaser _level and on a straight path into the docks.

"We should not forget the primary goal here, Atton," Mical said. The Jedi Padawan couldn't see the eyeroll that Atton was giving Dustil.

"Finding information on the Sith to send back to the Republic and the Order," Sarii finished.

Carth didn't like the look she was giving him. It wasn't exactly hostile, but it wasn't exactly friendly either.

He supposed he wouldn't be too happy with a person either if the reason he was out here getting tossed around by a mediocre pilot and tortured by trained Sith conversion artists was because they wanted his help in finding their wife. Who happened to be Revan.

"Yeah, true Sith, Dark Lords…whatever," Rand said, pushing himself off of the _Chaser _and waving his hand dismissively. "In the meantime, I was promised a drink. On the house. For saving us all."

"And cracking the hull in the women's crew quarters so it depressurized and now we have to share with you? All part of your plan?" Mira said, raising an eyebrow.

"Don't forget half the sensors," Sarii murmured.

"And the gun turret is currently offline as well," Mical added.

For a moment, Carth thought about switching ships. He was conflicted between not wanting the poor _Ebon Hawk _to suffer any more abuse at the hands of her new and apparently inept pilot, but sure as hell not wanting to put the sleek _Jedi Chaser _under his control either.

"And I thought Revan was a bad pilot," Dustil said under his breath, a wry smirk on his face.

"Don't worry, kid. I'll still buy you whatever they drink around here," Carth reassured Rand, who was glowering at the rest of his crew.

Despite what he'd done to the _Hawk_, and knowing he'd once been that cold, apathetic Sith who'd quietly sipped his drink on Remli Prime, it was growing harder to remember that Atton Rand had once been the enemy. Not when he reminded Carth of Dustil. Not when he reminded him of himself.

"The cantina's back that way," Carth continued, gesturing back towards the city and beginning to head in that direction. Maybe once he gave the pilot his promised juma, he'd shut up about breaking a couple of branches. And maybe they could get back to what was important—

Sarii Zhen's gaze was heavy on Carth's back. He was probably about due for an argument there too.

* * *

Funny how the cantina still reminded him of her.

The sign above the door was written in a circular, curving language that Carth had to assume was Kretti, or Krettan, or whatever they called it. Underneath it, for the benefit of all the visitors to the Nantu city spaceport was the translation in Basic: _Remme's Dive_.

Katrina had forgotten half the languages she'd known during the Star Forge mission; the ones she'd teased him in and traded barbs with aliens in various native tongues- in cantinas that produced lucky breaks like Canderous and Mission. The only language that it was useful to know on Citadel Station was Ithorese. You didn't need to understand ancient Rakatan to raise little girls on Telos. The Jedi Council and the various tasks they came up with didn't require a working knowledge of Bocce. You could forget how to do anything if enough time went by.

What Katrina couldn't forget were the things she _had _done, regardless of whether she was still capable of doing them.

_Remme's Dive _wasn't a dive at all. It was clean, tidy, more like a place you'd go after a long day than somewhere you'd hit up in the late hours of the night. It was somewhat crowded at this hour, and Carth turned sideways to let two Krettans pass.

He noticed they hadn't even brushed against his stomach although they had squeezed between him and Dustil- he was losing weight.

_Must be all the damn running and sweating, _Carth thought, partly disgruntled but mostly pleased.

Sarii and Mical had already seated themselves at a table. They were trading raised eyebrows and nodding heads that would have usually gone along with words had their mouths been moving. Carth recognized Jedi conversations now far too easily. It took a second to find Mira but there she was, drink already in hand and embedded in the cantina like she was an actress hired to play just another stock bounty hunter.

Next to Dustil, Atton Rand was making some lewd comment about the Twi'lek dancers just ending a show.

"So what happened to the Exile?" Dustil said to the pilot. "You not threatening people over her anymore?"

Rand narrowed his eyes at Carth's son.

"Don't go getting any ideas, kid. Especially with that supposed girlfriend of yours. Is she a fracking Jedi Knight too?"

Carth glanced over at Sarii, who wasn't paying any attention to the three of them as they sat down at the bar. He almost felt bad for Rand. Almost.

"She's not a Jedi," Dustil answered. "Her name's Tova. Tova Vin."

Rand glanced up at Dustil and then snorted.

"You should have quit while you were ahead, kid. Like I'm gonna believe you're fracking—" Carth gave him a sharp look. "Erm, _dating_ that morning HoloNet blonde."

Dustil ignored the pilot as the Krattan bartender approached. "Corellian something. Whatever you have."

Those long stalks shook and clapped against each other as the bartender nodded and reached for a glass. "Twenty credits."

"Twenty? I could get three _bottles _of Corellian anything for twenty back home—"

"You want imports from somewhere as far away as Corellia, son, you'll have to pay the price," the bartender replied, holding the bottle in one hand and the glass in other like he was waiting for Dustil's decision. "This stuff doesn't come in regularly."

"Now, see, I might have bought that you had a girlfriend. You're not exactly glowing bright blue like our friend Mical over there," Atton Rand continued smugly, already having gotten his drink from the Krattan's droid assistant. "But Tova Vin? Right, kid. In your sweaty dreams, maybe."

Dustil glared at the pilot and pulled out the credits.

"And you, sir?"

"Tyrusian Red Ale," Carth replied.

The bartender abandoned Dustil's drink and poured Carth's as fast as he could, almost recoiling from the filled glass. The drink smelled like burning rubber right out of the bottle. Dustil made a face.

"I don't know how you can drink that swill…"

Carth gulped down half of it and gently turned the glass in his palm, thankful that Dustil was now looking away from him. He'd developed a taste for it right after Telos had been destroyed.

"Looks like your old man's going to get more than either of us anyway," Rand added to Dustil, gesturing with his glass towards the end of the bar.

Carth's head turned on instinct. A dark-haired woman with black eyes sat with her hands folded under her chin, staring at him like he was a gift that was only missing a bow. Carth quickly looked back down at his drink, but it was too late. She was already misinterpreting a moment of eye contact and heading towards them.

"I almost wasn't going to come over," the woman said. "You really ought to think about changing your choice of drink if you want to have any luck with women."

Carth took another sip, staring at the back of the bar and trying not to look at her. "Didn't seem to stop you."

Dustil scoffed next to him, gulping his ale with an incredulous shake of his head.

"No, but I happen to like a challenge." The woman's voice had a constant teasing quality to it, like she already knew what he was going to say and it amused her to no end. "I'm Lora."

"Carth," he returned, without any elaboration.

That was how you got them to leave you alone. You were terse and apathetic until they gave up or gave you a lecture. The first part of his life he had frequented bars he had learned how to pick up women. The second part he had learned how to make them go away.

Lora laughed. Her dark hair fell over her shoulders and Carth could see her smirking out of the corner of his eye.

"You're surly enough to be a Gamorrean. Am I bothering you that much?"

Unfortunately, you could only be rude for so long until inbred manners kicked in.

"Just a little preoccupied at the moment," Carth answered, finally glancing at her.

She had either black eyes or really dark brown ones. They combed thoroughly over Dustil and then Rand before returning to Carth.

"Well you're no Gamorrean," Lora said, putting her glass on the bar and tilting her head to study him. I'm still preoccupied trying to figure out what you are, Carth."

"He captains our freighter," Rand offered from the end of the bar, giving Lora an inviting smirk. The woman ignored him.

"Captain," Lora corrected, touching his arm.

He hadn't been called Captain in a voice like that since…well…a long time ago.

"He's a soldier. Real famous one. Got a lot of medals and everything," Dustil informed the woman, ignoring Carth's frown.

"Really?" Lora's fingers danced their way over Carth's bicep. "You must be one brave guy."

"Or a really stupid one," he replied with a polite smile.

"Handsome _and _modest. I'm a lucky girl."

Dustil snorted into his drink and turned away so the woman wouldn't see him laughing.

"So, Captain," Lora continued. "What brings you into our fine establishment? Just passing through?"

"His wife left him," Dustil answered. Carth shot him as close to a glare as he could muster.

Lora moved closer to him. Her chin slid onto his shoulder and her breath was warm against his ear.

"That's a shame. She must be crazy to leave a handsome hero Captain." Her fingers were halfway under his collar now, touching his increasingly hot neck. "Maybe I can help you forget her."

A year and a half without Katrina meant a year and a half without—

Carth ended that thought right there.

"Maybe next time I pass through." He managed a smirk and a rakish wink as he pushed himself back from the bar. "Right now though, I've got a few things to settle with my crew."

He gripped the back of Dustil's clothing and practically hauled him off the bar stool, pulling him into a table near the back of the room and trying to ignore Lora's gaze. Rand trailed after them.

"Knock it off," he hissed at his son, sliding into the booth. "I know you're probably still mad at me, but that doesn't mean—"

"She's still watching us," Dustil interrupted, shoving Rand over so his elbow would fit on the tabletop. "And I could think up a lot better ways to get back at you then helping some woman hit on you."

"What the hell was that, then?"

"There's something off about her," Rand mumbled into his glass. "She eyed up Dustil more than she eyed up you."

He'd been avoiding eye contact with her, so if it was true, Carth hadn't noticed.

"What are we supposed to do about it then? And don't suggest what I think you're going to suggest," Carth said, holding a hand up at Rand's amused smirk.

"For one, Admiral, you shouldn't have freaked out and hauled us all over here. You're good at that freaking-out thing, apparently—"

"Owner of the _Ebon Hawk?_"

Carth glanced up at a trio of uniformed Krettan, their stalks coming out from under their hats like an elaborate headdress that didn't exactly go with their plain, pale green clothing.

"Yeah," Atton Rand answered. "Who wants to know?"

"We've been having some trouble with your ID signature, sir. We'd like for you and your crew to come to the port authority offices and help straighten it out."

Carth couldn't even imagine how many times the ID signature on the _Hawk _must have been changed, altered or hacked. It had to be degraded by now.

Rand grumbled and pushed himself up from the table, motioning towards Sarii and Mical to join him. Mira had already headed over.

Another Krettan entered the bar with a datapad, handing it to one of the uniformed officers standing over them and murmuring something in their native tongue.

"I'm afraid the _Chaser's _ID hasn't cleared either, sir," the officer said apologetically to Carth. He had sharp, angular features under pebbled skin. Combined with those hard, thick stalks coming out of his head, he looked like a rough sketch of a person rather than a polished sculpture. "If you could—"

"No problem," Carth said, sighing and getting up to follow the officers and the Exile's crew out of the cantina.

There were three additional uniformed Krettans waiting for them outside. They wore the same unalarmed expressions as the three who had entered it to retrieve them. The only difference was that these three were armed.

"Please hand over your weapons, sir, and we'll have this whole matter cleared up presently," the Krettan officer said without blinking an eyelid.

"We've been entirely cooperative," Carth replied, trying to keep his hand away from his blaster so his argument was more convincing. "There's no need to—"

"Standard policy, sir. With so many travelers passing through Nantu, some of a more unsavory nature, it's become regulation to confiscate weapons whenever there is a question of impounding a ship."

Being asked to give up his weapon still made him suspicious, but these officers had been polite. They reminded him of the TSF in a way, just trying to do their job and protect their spaceport. Carth finally nodded and handed over his blasters.

The rest of the crew followed. Rand stared hard at one of the officers for a moment or so before begrudgingly tossing him his blaster. Mira purposefully took her time removing the rocket launcher from around her wrist. Dustil raised an eyebrow at the guard who had confiscated Sarii and Mical's lightsabers, but finally relented and handed his over. When all of the weapons had been collected, the officer with the sharp, pointed nose nodded and gestured down a long, thin hallway that went behind the cantina.

"We've been having issues with a lot of ID signatures lately, so it may just be a computer error," the Krettan informed him. "I'm sure this will take no more than a few minutes and both the _Ebon Hawk _and the _Jedi Chaser_ will be cleared for departure."

Carth nodded. He wanted to waste as little time as possible on a planet that didn't have anything to do with Katrina. The ship was stocked and—

He hadn't registered it as the _Jedi Chaser. _They'd been going under only the _Chaser _everywhere except Remli Prime.

"Keep moving, please." Carth glanced over his shoulder at Dustil, who had stopped dead in his tracks at hearing the full name of their ship.

Either the officer leading them realized his own slip or noticed the look on Carth's face.

"This is a fine blaster you have here, sir. You seem to have put a lot of work into it," the Krettan said, inspecting Carth's weapon in his hands before charging it. "It would be ironic if I was forced to kill you with your own ingenuity, so I advise you to cooperate."


	18. Chapter 17

Sarii hadn't needed to hear the Krettan officer slip up on the ship's ID to know that something was very wrong. It was easy enough to figure that out when the hard barrel of a blaster jabbed into her back.

Onasi had looked at her over his shoulder. You didn't need the Force to read his thoughts—they were clear enough from his pointedly raised eyebrows, the furrowing and unfurrowing of his brow as he calculated odds, compared probabilities, and promptly rejected whatever desperate tooth-and-nail escape he'd been planning.

You also didn't need the Force to know that while the Krettan gang masquerading as officers weren't leading them to the local customs kiosk, they weren't leading them to their deaths either. At least, nothing like what lay at the end of a dark alley on Remli Prime.

Their path wound around the back of _Remme's Dive_ to a line of access and delivery doors for the storefronts on the opposite side. The elevator at the end of the back alley carried them down at least two or three levels before stopping, leaving room for a few minutes of uncomfortable silence. Dustil Onasi shifted his weight. Mira cleared her throat.

_None of them seem to have the Force. Would that rule out the Sith in these regions having orchestrated this? _Mical asked as the doors of the elevator opened up and the Krettans directed them down a short hallway.

_We must serve some purpose for them or they would have shot us on sight, _Sarii answered somewhat belatedly._ At least, intelligent kidnappers would. _

Sarii could think all the answers she wanted but the Force cage prevented Mical from hearing any of them. He continued to stand straight up with his hands folded behind him and a look on his face that was somewhere between curious and mildly put out. He, Sarii, and Dustil Onasi were all in separate Force cages along one wall. On the opposite, Atton, Mira, and the Admiral were enclosed in their own.

Atton leaned against the base of his cage with his arms folded and his legs crossed. Sarii wondered how many times in jail this totaled for him.

"What the frack did you do, Rand? Pay the docking fee with counterfeit credits?" Mira called from across the room. She put a hand on her hip but quickly lowered it again after her elbow brushed the sparkling blue of the security field.

"So is somebody going to come along and explain this soon?" Atton murmured to the guard who was standing between the doorframe and his cage.

"Keep your mouth shut."

"Look, buddy, my girl over there isn't going to be too happy with me if we keep her locked up for very long. So how about you tell me what's going on and I'll make it up to you when I get out of here?"

"Like I'd touch a credit from your worthless fingers, Jedi scum."

"Jedi?" Atton repeated disgustedly. "Hey, I'm no Jedi—"

"_Look_," Admiral Onasi broke in, moving as close to the security field as possible without actually making contact with it. "There's got to be someone around we can talk to, someone who can at least explain what it is you want from us."

The guard ignored him. Onasi frowned and ran a hand through his hair.

Next to Mical, Dustil Onasi was in much the same pose as Atton, leaning back with his arms folded as if this was the temporary inconvenience they'd been told it was. His head craned backwards, and he stared straight up at the circular generating unit that was powering his cage. Sarii glanced up at hers and didn't notice anything special.

Before she could attempt to make another appeal to the guard for some explanation, the door slid open and the uniformed Krettan who had led them here stepped forward. He stood at the end of the line of cells as if he was inspecting them all for purchase. At his side was a human woman, with dark hair and black eyes and a grave expression on her face.

Either grave, or extremely angry.

"I have to say, I'm a little impressed," the uniformed Krettan murmured, his hands clasped behind his back as he walked forward. "The disguises, the backstory…you're starting to put forth some effort." He glanced from Atton to Sarii and back to Mira, sizing them up one by one. The flat stalks protruding like hardened hair from his scalp made a faint rustling noise. "It won't keep me from filling the room with null gas if need be," he added, "But the effort is appreciated regardless. It shows Krett really does mean something to you."

"Lora—" Admiral Onasi called the dark-haired woman by name. "What's going on here?"

Lora shifted on her feet. Two fingers traced the handle of a blaster pistol as she watched.

"Your crew is being interrogated, Captain," she answered Onasi sweetly.

The uniformed Krettan smiled, congenial. "You've already been introduced to Lora. She operates primarily out of my bar. Or my 'dive', to be exact." He gave her a rakish smirk over his shoulder and she returned it, hefting her blaster to rest on her shoulder.

_Dive… _Remme's Dive. So the uniformed Krettan called himself Remme.

"We already know why," Remme continued gravely. "The how becomes more apparent every day. What I'm seeking from the six of you is the when and where."

He smiled, thin. "Whether it will take _all_ six of you is another question entirely."

Dustil Onasi rolled his eyes as if this was a badly-performed version of what was supposed to be a very good play. Sarii exchanged a glance with Mical.

"So." The Krettan held out his arms in invitation. "Does anyone want to begin?"

Both Sarii and the Admiral opened their mouths, but it was Atton who got there first.

"How's this for a beginning: I want out of this one-star hotel. Now."

Remme shrugged and motioned to the guard standing between Atton's cell and the doorway. The guard nodded, pressing a button on a wall-mounted control panel. There was a hissing sound.

Atton's face grew pale. He swayed on his feet, glaring murderously at Remme.

"Leave him alone," Sarii snapped. The Krettan only lifted an eyebrow at her.

Lora shrugged. "He wanted out. We aim to please."

"If I were you, sister, I'd knock off the scare tactics," the Admiral said authoritatively, holding out a hand in a perfect imitation of a Force push. The dark-haired woman's tilt of her head as Remme exchanged a glance with her over his shoulder showed how much authority Onasi had here.

Atton gave both of them an _I've-got-it-under-control­ _look as his cheeks began to turn a faint blue.

"We will answer any questions you have, so long as you leave us all capable of answering them." Mical's voice was calm, as if Atton had hours of oxygen left rather than precious seconds rapidly hissing away.

Remme stood unmoving for another long moment, and finally nodded to the guard. The hissing reversed in pitch and Atton began inhaling desperately.

"You have my attention, Master Jedi," the Krettan murmured, stepping past Sarii and Atton, (who was now bent over with his hands on his knees), to stand in front of Mical's cage. Lora followed. "So answer me this: why are you here in Nantu?"

Her Padawan gazed at them with the seasoned, perpetually amused look of a Master. "My companions and I are on an intelligence mission. Neither Krett nor Nantu were chosen as specific destinations; we are here merely to replenish supplies and gather what information we can from an unexplored planet."

"Unexplored planet? You're on a mission of exploration then."

"Only to a certain extent. Mapping the Unknown Regions is a secondary goal, however."

Remme nodded and pursed his lips in thought. "Would you be so kind then, Master Jedi—" his voice was an overly correct imitation of Mical's, "— as to tell us what your primary goals are?"

Mical shifted in his force cage. The dark-haired woman's eyes followed his movements.

"Naturally, I cannot reveal the particulars of our mission parameters—"

"Naturally," the Krettan repeated.

"In short, we are looking for something."

"Looking for something," Lora mocked. Her blaster sat in the grasp of her hand, the handle resting on top of her shoulder and the barrel pointed ninety-degrees towards the ceiling. "Would that something happen to be another independent planet you can overrun?"

Sarii watched Mical's face frown for a moment, insulted. "The perception of the Jedi throughout the Unknown Regions is based on Sith masquerading as Jedi. The true Jedi Order is—"

"A band of murderers. The Jedi destroy and leave things behind to rot. The Jedi twist everything they touch into something terrible."

Sarii would have liked to think that these accusations were unique to the Unknown Regions . Having heard them before, however, on planets like Onderon, Telos, Nar Shaddaa and Dantooine, she wondered if they weren't half true.

"No." Mical shook his head patiently. "The Jedi Order is based upon the principles of restraint, focus, and non-violence. The actions of the Force-users misrepresenting themselves as Jedi are not the actions of a Force user dedicated to the light side of the Force—"

"They're very good with words, aren't they?" Lora commented to Remme, gesturing lazily somewhere between Mical and Sarii. Her upper lip curled into a sneer. "But when you're pleading for your life, the lives of your loved ones, the freedom of your culture—they suddenly go mute."

"You've got us pegged all wrong," Admiral Onasi broke in impatiently. "The people you think are Jedi might carry lightsabers and use the Force and call themselves Jedi, but they're not—"

Remme tilted his head in thought. "Funny how quick sentients are to cast off their identities when faced with the consequences of them."

"Look, if a few of your head-stalk brigade decide to…oh, I don't know, take me and my crew hostage and threaten to cut off my oxygen if I don't give them answers I don't have," Atton motioned with his chin first at Remme and then at the guard who had worked the controls. "Well, I just wouldn't _dream_ of classifying the whole species as a bunch of paranoid skull-slappers—"

"You think it's funny?" Lora hissed, taking a few steps away from Mical's cage towards Atton's. "Sents dying left and right, the economies of entire planets being wiped out for failure to comply with the Jedi's requests?"

"Is there a Jedi Order subsidiary I don't know about?" Atton asked Sarii with widened, mocking eyes.

"We are Jedi as we know ourselves to be, not as you know them," Mical continued, impatient. "We are not part of the group of Force-users in these regions terrorizing local governments. In our regions of space, the Jedi use the Force for the protection of all sentient life and the pursuit of knowledge—"

Lora stormed forward, pressing a few buttons at the control panel near the base of Mical's cage. There was sudden surge in the hum of the field, and it pulsed around the Padawan like a living being. Mical was sucked back against the base of the cage as though magnetized. The circular field surrounding him shrank, concentrated entirely around his torso, pinned to the steel back of the Force cage.

Lora slammed the barrel of her blaster into his forehead so hard Sarii was surprised it didn't come out the other side of Mical's head.

"Protection of sentient _life_?" she repeated, each word stressed a little more incredulously than the last.

"Lora—" Remme unclasped his hands from behind his back and was reaching one out towards the dark-haired human woman.

"Jedi bring death. Jedi bring destruction. Jedi don't listen when you get on your knees and plead for mercy." Lora's hand trembled on the trigger of the blaster, pressing it harder into Mical's forehead. Sarii's Padawan winced, his eyes closed and a few strands of his blond hair falling around the metal circle of the blaster.

"Jedi see an obstacle and remove it." Her voice shook more than her hand. "That's all they care about. All they do."

"Lora."

The Krettan's voice was firm this time. The faint rustle of his headstalks was the only sound for a moment.

Lora's chin bunched and then smoothed. Her shoulders stiffened and she stepped away from Mical, smacking a hand down on the controls. Mical fell forward onto his hands, barely missing the blue energy field as it circled back around the cage.

Remme reached for Lora's hand as the human woman passed him, squeezing it once without looking at her. The Krettan exhaled heavily and glanced up at Mical again.

"Master Jedi, this elaborate ruse is quickly losing its appeal. I want an explanation of how the Jedi plan to infiltrate and control Krett's economy. I want to know exactly what step in this process you are here to facilitate."

"Now," he added, as if that wasn't obvious.

"We…have no knowledge…of the _Sith_'s plans for Krett," Mical replied, breathing heavily, wiping a few beads of sweat from his forehead.

"You keep using that word as if I should react to it."

The further they traveled into the Unknown Regions, the less distinction was made between Sith and Jedi. Now it seemed as though there wasn't any, right down to the signifiers.

"This is getting ridiculous." Admiral Onasi stood as close to the blue energy field as he could without brushing it. "Look, I'm no Force user. You can let me out of this cage and we can go somewhere and talk like civilized sents."

"And your being let out of the cage is necessary for this?" Remme murmured.

"No." Onasi eyed Atton and then Mical. "It would make it a hell of a lot less frustrating, though."

The Krettan's head tilted in thought. His headstalks made a hard smack when he turned his head towards the guard. The field around the Admiral's cage dissolved into white static and then vanished. Onasi stepped out, rubbing his neck and smoothing back the static electricity in his hair. He nodded briskly at Remme.

The lines of the Krettan's uniform (stolen? Earned? Taken off a real dock security officer?) were straight and clean. Despite the Admiral's stubble and the grime his orange jacket was beginning to collect, the way the two men carried themselves made their exit look more like the beginnings of a peace accord than an interrogation or, possibly, the Admiral walking off to his death.

Lora lingered for a moment, her dark eyes still focused intensely on Mical, almost through him. Remme glanced over his shoulder at her as he and Onasi went through the doorway. Something passed between them and then Lora finally turned and followed, as if she already knew some kind of treaty was coming.

If Sarii hadn't just watched her question Mical with a blaster behind the haze of a Force-disrupting security field, it might have been easier to believe it.

* * *

Aside from one other guard, who had been waiting on the other side of the doors, Carth was alone with Remme and Lora. It made him wonder just how big of an operation this was. It almost gave him a false sense of security. Like he'd gained their trust.

More likely, they knew that three armed sents against an unarmed one were impossible odds. Maybe his blaster had been dismantled by now. Hell, Remme might still be carrying it, for all he knew. There were enough places on the Krettan's uniform to stash it.

Carth wasn't entirely sure what he'd had in mind when he'd volunteered to be interrogated. But he was sure he'd accomplish more than Rand's smart mouth or Mical's unintentionally inflammatory rhetoric.

"Look, I'll level with you," he told Remme. "You're probably not going to believe my story any more than you believed Mical's." _Probably because they're the same—_

"The truth of any story depends on the listener, Captain. Though the teller can influence it to a certain degree."

"I'm not a Captain. I'm an Admiral. Admiral Carth Onasi."

The Krettan smiled without looking at him. "Well, I'm afraid you outrank the port authority guard who's a little too fond of Shesharillian vodka and happened to be my size." He led them down the dimly-lit corridor, stopping to tap a code into the keypad of an access door which revealed another corridor.

"So. _Level_ with me, Admiral Carth Onasi. What is a man like yourself, with a genuine military background and a fairly evident sense of ethics, doing with a traveling troupe of Jedi?"

For a moment, Carth was ready to begin explaining Mical had already said. Everything was backwards out here. The Jedi were sworn to protect the Republic. They were (or tried to be, anyway) the defenders of the innocent and the maintainers of galactic peace.

He tried to picture himself back in his uniform, back on Coruscant, listening to someone with headstalks trying to tell him that the Jedi were an cold, merciless order who didn't understand the concept of freedom or the consequences of their actions.

He tried to remember that it wasn't true.

"The Jedi are helping me find something."

"Power? Influence? Credits?" The disgust in the Krettan's voice grew with each possibility.

"My wife."

Remme lifted an eyebrow at him. The movement made his brow and the headstalks connected to it rise, sliding against each other, making a soft clicking sound that echoed crisply in the hallway.

That look was becoming more and more the standard reaction to his story. Pity. Like everyone else already knew what he was going to find—or what he wouldn't.

"I thought your wife left you," Lora murmured, following close behind them. Carth didn't have to look over his shoulder to know that her blaster was still in her hand.

"She did," he muttered, looking away and frowning.

"Your Jedi friends didn't seem too sympathetic."

"And you acted like you were. Maybe they're not what they seem either, sister."

Remme stopped in front of another doorway, pressing a thumb against the door controls and stepping inside what looked like a large office--if your everyday office had neatly stocked racks of disruptor rifles and frag grenades lining the back walls.

The Krettan smoothly crossed to the desk, sitting down in the chair behind it and unhooking the collar of his uniform. He gestured to a much less comfortable chair on the opposing side. Carth took it, aware of the guard standing watch at the doorway behind him, and Lora taking up a post over Remme's shoulder, her blaster still very far from its holster.

"Here we are, Admiral," Remme murmured, gesturing with both hands at the room around them. "Two civilized sents on either side of a table. I can't think of what else might make you more comfortable. Some caffa? A massage?"

"Can we count on a discussion that won't involve a blaster in my face every time I say something you might not agree with?" Carth asked, glancing at Lora.

Lora shifted. Her nostrils flared. "You can count on the barrel shoved up your—"

Remme, without turning his head, lifted an arm up behind him and took the blaster from Lora, putting it on the desk. He tented his fingers in front of him, staring across the desk at Carth pointedly.

"All right," he exhaled. "I'm going to start with why we're out here…"

* * *

The Admiral had been gone for maybe a good fifteen minutes. Sarii wanted to pace, but you couldn't take more than one step in any direction inside the cages. Next to her, Mical was still trying to rub the imprint of the blaster barrel out of his forehead.

"We need to get out of here," she said quietly. Her Padawan lifted an eyebrow through his disheveled hair and the blue haze of the energy field as if that weren't obvious.

At the end of the row, on the other side of Mical, Dustil Onasi was crouched down, examining something at the bottom of the cage. He glanced in the direction of the guard, who was looking through one of the storage lockers that presumably held their belongings. Dustil slowly stood up.

"I think I can bust us out," he whispered.

Mical regarded him warily. "How?"

"There's a design flaw in these cages," Dustil explained in a low voice. "The emitting beams only go to about an inch away from the base, to avoid scoring and shortages. A few prisoners on Korriban escaped once, and there was extra credit in it for any student who could figure out the manufacturer's mistake."

"And you were the student?"

Dustil shrugged. "It wasn't a big deal. I lost equivalent prestige the next day for contraband. Fracking Jin decided to put his stash in my footlocker during a surprise inspection." He shook his head as if vowing silent revenge. "They put in a new order and all the cages were replaced within the week." He put his palm against the flat metal of the base. "Luckily for us, they haven't seen the latest Czerka catalog out here."

The younger Onasi looked in the direction of the guard again, who was now eyeing the three of them suspiciously, hands curled around his blaster rifle.

"Can't do it if he's watching, though," he added.

Mical turned his head in the direction of the guard. His blue eyes narrowed in thought. "How much time do you require?"

"Thirty seconds."

Mical nodded. Without the Force and the uninterrupted flow of the Master-Padawan bond, Sarii couldn't tell what was going though his head.

"Certainly you must be tired of standing there," he called out to the guard. "Does your master think you suitable for nothing else?"

_Something crazy, apparently…_

* * *

"That's all this is, Remme. I swear to you."

The Krettan blinked at Carth across the desk. He rested on his elbows, his hands folded in front of his mouth.

"So you're looking for your wife and information on those who may be holding her on Verte," he murmured. "And that's all?"

Carth hadn't realized how simple it sounded, maybe even was, until now. That was all he wanted; to find Katrina and go home. The information on the true Sith was secondary, even inconsequential compared to that one goal.

He nodded. "Where we come from, Katrina's…she's done some bad things. Things she feels guilty for." There wasn't any other way to explain it. There was no way Remme and Lora would understand.

"We've all done some things we aren't proud of," Remme said quietly. He straightened up, unclasping his hands and laying them on the desk. "I believe you, Admiral. And I want to help you find your wife and get back to your little girl. But I also want to help keep you from making a big mistake—from doing something that someday, no matter what it gets you, you won't be proud of." His pebbled skin seemed darker with the determination on his face.

"The people you've chosen to help you are not what you think they are. They have abilities…beyond anything you or I are capable of, and they're strong in the Force, I'll give you that…but it's their abilities that fuel their beliefs. The Jedi are after only one thing: control. They think sents like us can't manage our own lives, can't use our own resources, can't govern our own people. If you put your trust in them, they'll abuse that trust. You may find your wife, and they'll decide for you that she's not worth the risk—never mind whether it's your risk or theirs."

"No...things are different where we come from. The Jedi and the Republic work together, they're not—"

"You may believe it's a cooperative union," the Krettan interrupted sharply, "But I've seen what they can do. They'll ingrain themselves so far into a society that the society becomes dependant on them. Eventually sents are so afraid of the alternative to that control that they'll convince themselves they agreed to it."

His voice had become as iron as his aquiline features by the time he finished speaking. Remme exhaled, his headstalks clicking softly.

"We will do whatever we can to help you find your wife, Admiral. I can offer you information if you'll agree to sever ties with the Jedi. We can offer protection to you and the rest of your crew—"

"No, you don't—" Carth sighed in exasperation. "The Force users you're thinking of, the ones out here--they're called something else where I'm from. They're Sith."

"Sith," Remme repeated. He paused. "The Jedi used that word as well."

"With good reason. The Jedi and the Sith are…" He gave Remme a pained smile. "Well, collaboratively anyway, they've done everything you're afraid of…"

* * *

"_Master_," the guard repeated after Mical derisively, shaking his head. "That's all you Jedi understand—the threat of someone stronger."

Mical snorted, shaking his head. Sarii wondered if the plan would backfire—and the guard would irritate Mical enough to distract him instead.

"Violence and coercion appear to be all the Krettan people understand. I don't suppose you would consider correcting me on that point?"

The guard rolled his eyes and didn't respond.

"Perhaps you're incapable of it," her Padawan added doggedly. "After all, the extent of your economy appears to be dockside bars and entertainment. I even wonder at there being anything more substantial in this godforsaken outpost."

He got no reaction except the continual buzz of the security fields. Atton folded his hands behind his head and leaned back against the base of his cage, watching them with a lazy, amused smirk on his face. The guard turned his head away and frowning, humming something in a jerky, off-key rhythm.

Dustil Onasi gave him a withering glare. "This isn't the debate team, Mical. You're supposed to piss him off."

"Did I appear to be attempting something else?" Mical shot back. He furrowed his brow at the guard again. The Krettan narrowed his eyes at the Jedi and cocked his assault rifle.

"Maybe talk about the Jedi again," Sarii suggested quietly. "They don't seem to like hearing anything good about them."

In the same way that Jedi didn't like to hear about Sith, in the same way that the Republic didn't like to hear about the Mandalorians, in the same way that anyone didn't like to hear the truth.

"You know," Mical began, his voice taking on a different tone. "Your resistance has no chance. A few blasters and vibroblades aren't anything compared to the Force—"

"A few cruel-hearted, mouthy prisoners aren't anything _without_ the Force," the guard replied without missing a beat.

"Cruel? _Cruel?_ I suppose this is the thanks we get," Mical remarked loudly to Sarii. "To step upon the garbage pit that was Teren, and revitalize the economy into an organized, productive factory—"

The guard's skin was speckled a pale blue over an increasingly dark slate. "More men and women have died on Teren since breeding and raising tateks became the only means of survival. You find that particularly _productive_?"

"The weak perish. The strong survive. The sentients who were meant to learn this lesson early." Mical's voice was a dry, indifferent sneer that Sarii had never heard before. Dustil Onasi glanced over his shoulder at the base of his cage, slowly moving backwards until he was resting against it.

The guard's jaw tightened and he glared intensely at Mical for a moment.

"You do understand that, don't you?"

"Shut up," the Krettan snapped.

"The will of the Force is indomitable," Mical continued, impassive. "We merely follow where it leads us. Death is a necessary balancing tool—"

The guard's headstalks slapped against each other violently as he forced his head away. Dustil glanced at Mical, hands behind his back, presumably ready to do whatever it was that would disable his cage.

"A sentient is never truly gone. They go on to serve a far more glorious purpose—joining the living presence that is the Force and adding to the power the Force is capable of—"

The Krettan guard's head whipped around. He charged over to a storage locker, reaching inside and pulling out what looked to be an ordinary pair of rubber gloves. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and marched towards Mical. He wound back an arm as if he was going to deck the Jedi.

Sarii fully expected his hand to meet the crackling blue of the field, fizzing and hissing around his knuckles. Instead, it went cleanly through the field as if it were no thicker than kolto gel. The Krettan reached in as far as the glove allowed him—enough to grip Mical's collar, who lifted his eyebrow in a weary _not-this-again_ expression.

"Here's some balancing for you. There are six of you in this room. Five's got to equal whatever you're worth—"

"He really didn't mean it," another voice murmured, no longer distorted through the glow of three energy fields. The guard turned his head and met Dustil Onasi, standing behind him.

The Jedi's face was subdued despite the success of his thirty-second escape routine. "Try to remember that when you wake up," Dustil added, clocking the Krettan across the face.

* * *

Remme's fingers were tapping on the desk. His mouth was screwed up in a thoughtful purse. Carth wasn't sure if he had maligned the Jedi or raised them up on an unthinkably high pedestal. Reconciling his own opinions with official ones, (of which he wasn't even entirely knowledgeable), and trying to define the Sith at the same time--without mentioning Dustil and without taking a detour back through his role in the Mandalorian and Sith Wars—not to mention the Star Forge—had left him feeling a little dazed.

And the look on Remme's face didn't improve his confidence any.

"Do you get what we've been trying to tell you?" Carth prompted.

The Krettan cocked an eyebrow. "A Rurylis blossom by any other name. I understand, Admiral. What I still don't know is if I believe you."

"Whether you believe me about the Jedi or not, you need to realize that I'm not your enemy."

He couldn't help glancing at Lora, standing with her back to them and her arms folded, regarding a shelf full of repeating autoblasters as if they were more sympathetic than either Carth or Remme could ever be.

"Our primary goal out here isn't to stop the Sith now, but we're going to try, as soon as we return to Republic space. The Republic has resources, they can help Krett—"

Remme held up a hand, shaking his head. "Were I in any position to make the decision, Admiral, I would decline. A multi-planetary union headed by a group of elected delegates and supported by Force-users who aren't regulated or controlled by any kind of public body? The Republic doesn't sound like much of a step up from our Jedi or from your Sith."

That was a smack in the face. Carth wondered if it would sting as much if he hadn't devoted his entire life to the protection of that multi-planetary union, to maintaining its stability, to putting it above each and every thing he loved—right down to his former-Sith-turned-Jedi son, sitting in a Force cage a few rooms away.

His son who was missing out on what was left of his life because his father wanted his wife back.

Carth cleared his throat, shifting in his chair. Maybe he should tell them about Dustil. Maybe they should know just how much the Jedi and the Sith hit home—

"Has it stopped?"

Both Carth and the Krettan across from him turned to look at Lora, who hadn't said a word since Remme had taken her blaster. It was still lying on the desk between them, silent and cold.

"Has what?"

"This." Her dark hair fluttered as she gestured with her chin. "The killing. The dying. The persecution and the control. After all the years of war you said you've seen, with your good Jedi and your Republic—has it stopped?"

"No." _Will it ever?_

There would never be a time when there wasn't something to fight. There would never be anything monumental enough to negate the past—both his and Katrina's. _Revan's._

Maybe he never should have left.

"I lost my first husband to them," Lora finally murmured, glancing over her shoulder at him. Her black eyes would seem bottomless if Carth hadn't seen the same depths they had.

"I lost my first wife."

Lora nodded without asking for elaboration. She must have understood that the circumstances weren't important—only that the person was gone.

Remme watched her with a sober, sad smile. "Lora and I met out of shared hatred," he murmured to Carth. "I suppose it says something about the nature of the galaxy that we eventually married as well."

With her back still to her husband, the return of that same pained smile on Lora's face was visible only to Carth.

"Well. If this is a mistake, Admiral," Remme began, looking back at Carth, "then it won't be the first I've made. I've got a proposition for you…"

* * *

"Don't offer to help or anything, gentlemen," Mira grumbled as she assisted Sarii in lifting the unconscious Krettan guard into a now-inactive Force cage. He was heavy, even without the large assault rifle, which was now slung over Dustil Onasi's shoulder as if he actually knew how to use one.

Atton and Mical went straight for the security lockers, rifling through them for their belongings. Dustil paused for a moment, white light glowing around his bruised knuckles as he healed them. He shook his hand out, reaching with the other for his lightsaber.

"All right," he breathed, running a hand through his hair. "We grab Father and make a run for it."

"After, you know, navigating our way out of this secret underground lair and avoiding any guards and not getting captured again," Atton said.

Mira scoffed, finally propping the Krettan guard up in the cage and reactivating the energy field. "You're just mad you didn't think of it. Onasi Junior's one-upped you again."

Mical extended his lightsaber, turning it over in his hands as if he could detect frequency shifts by eyesight alone. Sarii tried to get used to the foreign hilt of hers, constructed and used by another Jedi long dead or converted back on Remli Prime.

_Nice job back there. _The Force had returned, and Mical could hear her approval. He glanced up at her, nodding. His own thoughts were uncharacteristically subdued.

_Your Padawan learns something new every day_, Kavar commented lightly, as if there had only been a brief pause in his lecture. _And not just about the galaxy around him._

Sarii already knew that. It was one of the reasons she'd originally chosen Mical for her Padawan—his appetite for knowledge and his open-mindedness towards new or different ideas. She smiled to herself. _Is there a reason you keep pointing out the obvious to me?_

There was no response. Outside of the living Force, Dustil was leading them out of the room, back down the same dimly lit corridor they had been directed through. "We took a left here. Right?"

"No, left," Mira whispered.

"That's what I said. I think right's got to lead to offices or quarters or something like that—"

"Or a guard's lounge," Atton supplied.

"Which way do you want to go, Rand? Straight?" Dustil pointed to the dead-end wall in front of them.

"How about you both quit _arguing _before—"

Mira's admonition was completed by the sudden, bright flashing of a red emergency light over their heads. The requisite sound was a faint, out of tune wheeze, as if the alert system needed new batteries.

"Nice," the bounty hunter exhaled, glowering at the two men.

* * *

"…that doesn't sound too hard, Remme. But what do we get out of it besides being released?"

The Krettan smiled mirthlessly at Carth. "I wouldn't call it a reward, but . . . ." He reached for a datapad lying atop a pile of papers and held it out."Coordinates to Verte. They're yours—"

His hand reached for the datapad eagerly. Too eagerly. Remme tilted it back towards his side of the desk, just out of Carth's grasp.

"—if you're sure you want to take the risk. If you're certain it's worth it." The Krettan turned the datapad rightside up, looking over it carefully. "I can't tell you anything about Verte except that it's where they are. And no one goes there by choice if they've got something to lose. Do you?"

He thought of Dustil. Of Celyn. Of what might be waiting for him on Verte. Of what he might lose just by finding out the truth.

Maybe it was better to go home. Go home and keep hoping—if he never found her, he never had to accept that she wasn't coming back.

Then he thought of coming all the way out here, getting this close, and then turning around and giving up.

"I have to try," Carth answered.

Remme nodded, resigned. "We appear to have an agreement then, Admiral." He extended a hand.

Carth took it. "Thank you. Maybe when the Republic starts sending scouting expeditions out here, we'll meet again."

"If your Jedi don't get here first," the Krettan replied.

"Just keep an open mind when they do—"

Remme's office was suddenly aglow in a wash of red light. The Krettan's eyes narrowed at an emergency beacon above their heads, the harsh crimson color making the speckles on his face and the dark hair on Lora's head stand out. The pair exchanged a glance. Carth strained to hear the sirens he'd expect to accompany the alarm, but all he could hear was a faint ringing.

Remme headed straight for the door, Lora right behind him with blaster in hand.

"What's going on?" Carth asked, following. Neither responded, turning corners and navigating hallways with focused, intense looks on their faces. He got the feeling this wasn't the first time the alarm had gone off.

Further down the corridor, they could hear noises, some scuffling and yelling, which quickly turned into a few scattered blaster shots—punctuated by the sharp crackle-hiss of lightsabers. Remme and Lora broke into a run.

When they rounded the corner, a stray blaster shot nearly hit Remme in the face. He stopped short, glancing at the scorch mark it left in the wall and then turning to look at the owner.

Atton Rand lowered his blaster, breathing heavily and waving a flap of his jacket as if to cool himself. A few unconscious guards (Carth hoped to hell they were only unconscious) lay scattered between more angry-looking Krettans and the rest of their crew. In the foreground stood Dustil, the Exile, and Mical. All with lightsabers blazing.

His son did a double take over his shoulder, turning around a little awkwardly because of the guard's body with the nose bleed under his feet. Carth wasn't sure if his red lightsaber had always been that bright, or if it just appeared that way because of the flashing emergency lights overhead.

"Father," Dustil breathed. "We were just coming to rescue you."

There was an audible smack when Carth's palm hit his forehead.


	19. Chapter 18

"_I hope you like seafood, Master Jedi." _

_Sarii nodded vigorously. _

_The buttons on Admiral Karath's uniform glinted a bright gold against the ferracrystal wine glasses. "I didn't want to risk a menu with _rahk _on it," he told the rest of the table. They all laughed, some politely. Mandalorian slurs didn't feel quite socially acceptable yet. Sarii sipped from her wine glass and tried to slow her beating heart._

_Joining the contingent of Jedi who were going to aid the Republic in the Mandalorian War effort had, at first, seemed like it was going to be a heartwrenching, divisive ordeal. Master Kavar hadn't spoken to her since she'd left the Temple. None of the Jedi sitting at the table even lived there anymore—the Republic provided them with military quarters. It felt like someone had taken her off of Kamino and stuck her in Tatooine._

_But now, sitting at a table in dress robes, surrounded by top officials from each branch of the Republic military, Sarii felt like this maybe wasn't the worst career move she could have made._

_Admiral Karath had addressed her directly, as Master Jedi. It had felt almost as good as when General Veers had informed her that her experience made her an excellent candidate for ground deployment, with the honorary rank of General. The grin had broken onto Sarii's face before she could throw a veil of Jedi serenity on._

_Revan had smirked._

_She sat at the center of the table, Malak at her side, giving occasional reassuring smiles to Sarii and the other Jedi, freshly titled with the Fleet or the infantry. She didn't look out of place at all, despite the Jedi robes, the plain braid of hair, the lack of shiny medals or insignia. She looked men like Admiral Karath and General Veers directly in the eye when she spoke to them._

"_Knowledge of Mandalorian customs and culture might not be something we want to entirely avoid, Admiral." She took a bite of her food._

"_No, nor would I suggest it. Knowing your enemy is the first key to destroying them."_

_It was strange, hearing words like 'enemy' and 'destroy' with the tinkle of ferracrystal and Tempari all around them. The whirr of the servodroids almost complemented the faint stringed soundtrack coming from speakers in the vaulted ceilings._

"_The latest reports indicate they're massing along the Althiri border," General Veers commented._

"_That would suggest an attempt to take control of the Althiri sector," Malak said. He'd had tattoos imprinted on his shorn head, grey and block-like. Combined with his voice, he sounded even wiser. "Their pattern has tended to move in stages; overrunning outlying settlements and posts until they've surrounded the larger infrastructures."_

_Commander Piett scowled. "Barbarians."_

"_Intelligent barbarians," Revan clarified. "The Republic isn't thinking along the same lines as a Mandalorian. While we sit here letting them shock us, they're thinking up new ways to do it. The more audacious they are, the more timid we become." She held her fork upright with one hand and sliced methodically with the knife in the other._

"_The Republic cannot imitate their attacks, Jedi Revan. If we are to retake the conquered planets, we need to defeat them strategically. The Mandalorians are merciless. They have no regard for the freedom and cultures of other systems—"_

"_Exactly."_

_Revan replaced her knife neatly next to her dish. Her gaze lifted. "An eye for an eye, Admiral. One Serroco for another." She took a bite._

_The table was quiet. Everyone chewed thoughtfully._

Sarii woke up in a cold sweat, huddled against the bulkhead that formed one side of her bunk. The room was silent, except for the steady hum of the _Hawk_'s engines.

She swung her legs out and sat on the edge of the bunk, rubbing her arms and trying to wipe the sleep from her eyes. There wasn't much else to do besides sleep, now that they were on the last leg of their journey to Verte. She had already recalibrated her patchwork lightsaber and meditated enough to last her a lifetime.

She should have been counting her blessings that her biggest problem right now was having a bad dream. A few days ago on Krett, that hadn't been the case. They'd spent forty-eight hours helping Remme and his group plan and execute a break-in to the Nantu Central Security Base, to retrieve records of communications and transactions to Verte. More port authority uniforms had to be stolen. Mical had ended up with one two sizes too small. Atton had tripped a heat shield. Admiral Onasi had been concerned about breaking into the security force of a government the Republic hadn't established any kind of relations with yet, but they'd done it anyway.

And now they were following the missing part of Revan's trail, creating their own dotted line from the coordinates Remme and Lora had given them, speeding towards Verte. Towards Revan.

Sarii slipped her boots on, pushing the blanket back on the bunk and padding past Mira, asleep in the bunk opposite hers.

The corridor leading to the women's crew quarters stared directly down the length of the _Ebon Hawk_ to the men's. The door was open, and Sarii could see Mical sitting on the floor, legs folded and eyes closed, deep in the throes of meditation. She couldn't tell what he was thinking about. He hadn't said much since Krett. She decided that interrupting him wasn't going to change that.

She continued through the common room and towards the cockpit. Atton Rand's boots were the only part of him she could see, resting on the top of the console, the toe moving a switch back and forth that Sarii hoped operated something completely unimportant.

"No asteroid fields yet?" she asked, sitting down in the co-pilot's chair next to him.

Atton's head lolled towards her, his eyebrow lifted as if her being there was an anomaly. "Not yet," he finally answered.

"I don't feel like we're ready for this yet. Like we need another planet to land on or a harder firefight or something first," Sarii murmured.

Atton snorted. "Excitement? Adventure? A Jedi gets their rocks off not on these things."

Experience and preparedness, more like. Not feeling like you had long relinquished control of your life to someone else, and the finish line was dead ahead.

"Did you hear anything about this place?" Sarii asked, glancing sideways at him. "When you…when you used to hear about Remli Prime?"

Atton shook his head. "Not a word. Wouldn't have surprised me, though. Revan and Malak had tricks practically falling out of their sleeves." He bent his leg towards him and brushed a piece of dirt from his boot. "Compared to a constantly regenerating starship factory, I think a planet full of ancient Sith is a little unimpressive."

"Sith don't impress you at all?"

He glanced sideways at her. "Now I wouldn't have joined them if that were true, would I?"

Sarii looked back out at the cockpit window. Stars streaked past in long blue and white lines, stretched into infinity by hyperdrive.

Atton had been at her side through five planets and six Jedi Masters. But almost everything she knew about him was secondhand, hissed through a back alley Twi'lek's filed teeth or handed to her in a perfunctory report by Admiral Onasi.

"Why did you join them?" she asked.

"I didn't," he answered curtly. "I'm not a Sith. Never was."

"But you—"

"Did work for the Sith. Dirty work. But it's not like I was going out for Acolyte or Lord or anything. It's not like I know anything a good Sith's supposed to know."

"Except how to kill Jedi."

Atton stared at her. "Yeah," he scoffed, turning back to the stars. "That I do know."

The _Ebon Hawk _was deteriorated enough now that she made enough noise to almost fill a silence. The engines hummed beneath their feet. Various indicator panels let off soft, intermittent beeps. Every so often, the ceiling creaked as though the wires were straining to provide power.

"Why did you join them?" Atton's voice jarred the rhythm, sending everything a beat or so off.

"Why did I follow Revan and Malak?" Sarii repeated.

"Yeah." His hands slid across the controls, not so much manipulating them as making sure they were smooth. "I mean, we all know why I did; because I'm a heartless bastard without a brave bone in my traitorous body, but last time I checked, you had a spine."

Was the last time he'd checked been when she'd snapped back at Atris after they'd crashlanded on Taris? Had it been in the Sith tomb on Dxun? Or was it later, on Malachor V, refusing to look at the dead hulks of starships and short-range fighter corpses littered around them?

Because it certainly hadn't been in the last few months: textbook instructing her Padawan, submitting to the will of the Jedi Council, wandering deeper and deeper into the Unknown Regions to find Revan after Sarii had insisted to everyone that asked (and even those who didn't) that she wanted nothing more to do with Revan the traitor, Revan the Sith, Revan the Lord.

"She and Malak were going to stop the Mandalorians. It made much more sense then—"

Atton snorted. "No, it didn't."

"The means didn't justify the end. What was happening to them should have been obvious. When you're just barely out of being a Padawan, you don't think. It was an error in judgement—"

"No, it wasn't. You still think you're right. You still think that following her was the right thing to do, and if you could do it all over again, you'd _still _flip the Council the banshee bird and go filet yourself some Mandalorian hide."

"I wouldn't—"

"But for some reason, you're doing everything you can to make sure nobody finds out," Atton interrupted, turning his head to look at her. "Why is that? Everybody fracking knows already, Sarii. You fought. You were at Malachor V. You were exiled, Exile."

"And I don't want it to happen again," Sarii snapped.

The pilot rolled his eyes. "Sure you don't."

Maybe years of hunting Jedi had given Atton the ability to see through a Jedi's calm, cool, collected veneer of platitudes and statues.

"_Lust, impatience, cowardice…most Jedi awareness doesn't cruise beyond the surface feelings, to see what's deeper."_

Maybe years of meticulously maintaining his own veneer had made the cracks in Sarii's all the more apparent.

"I don't think my decision was wrong," she began quietly, "But I regret what it helped to bring about."

"Oh yeah?" Atton drawled. "Like what?"

"Like the rise of two Sith Lords who destroyed countless planets and ended millions of lives. Like the loss of half of fleet at Malachor. Like the entire Sith War, like every lost Jedi, like…"

His smile was mirthless. "Like me?"

_Like you. _"Like Mical. He's decades behind where he should be. And I'm the one that stuck him there."

"_I don't understand why the Council is going against their own teachings, Master," Sarii added resolutely. "The Republic needs us. It's our responsibility to help."_

_The countless midnight conversations and secret whisperings between training sessions among the eldest Padawans and the recently promoted knights had all led to the same conclusion: The Republic was in trouble. They were Jedi. You didn't need to be a Jedi Master or one of the two leaders in promoting the call to war to realize what that meant. _

"_Your motives do you credit, as they do all Jedi who are outraged by the actions of the Mandalorians," Kavar continued patiently, "But you forget that we are also the guardians of peace. You forget the Code: there is no ignorance, there is knowledge. We cannot defend against something we know nothing about-"_

"_The Mandalorians are attacking the Republic. They want to take over the galaxy. They've slaughtered thousands already- what more is there to know?"_

_"You spoke of sacrifice, Sarii," Master Kavar's voice was gentle now, like when she was a child and first chosen as a Padawan. "You and the others don't realize the extent of what you may lose in this war."_

"_I'm a Jedi now, Master Kavar. And that means I can't stand by when there are people who need help."_

_But there was something she had to do first. Something she had to end before it had even begun._

_Sarii rounded the corner into the padawan blocks. It was the last few weeks of Trials season. Padawans took their trials and were knighted—or given jobs within the Temple. Sarii had already seen some of them tending the grounds, shelving books, greeting visitors. Trying not to look like their nightmares had come true._

_As the padawans turned into knights, the apprentices turned into padawans. Today must have been one of the moving days. Eight to thirteen year-olds with fresh Padawan braids and crisp, never-worn robes were carrying small footlockers or bags to their newly inherited rooms._

_Sarii wove around them, glancing in each room for blond hair and blue eyes._

"_Master Zhen!"_

_He found her first, after moving effortlessly through a crowd of padwans. His arms were empty, so he must have finished moving in. Efficient and ahead of everyone else, as usual._

_Sarii waited for the Padawans between them to move and approached him._

"_Mical." She couldn't think of a way to begin. "How are you?"_

"_Well." He nodded like she might not believe his word alone. "I've been reading the _Book of Practical Lightsaber Technique_ and practicing with Master Bacara. I wasn't sure what you wanted me to prepare for, so I've been doing a little of everything."_

_His voice had changed somehow between the last time Sarii had spoken with him and now. Was he a little taller too? His head reached her chin. Before long he would be taller than her._

_But she wouldn't be here to see it. Mical was watching her intently, ready to hang on her every word. Sarii felt terrible._

_But there were people dying, under the oppression of a power they couldn't fight. That was more important. That was the responsibility of a Jedi. And Sarii couldn't think of a better way to teach Mical that lesson._

_That didn't make starting any easier._

"_Padawan—Mical." Sarii touched his shoulder, lightly. Not quite comfortable yet. "Our lessons will have to wait. I'm leaving."_

_Mical's face didn't fall. His expression stayed frozen on his face even as he nodded._

"_You understand, don't you? The Mandalorians grow more ruthless and aggressive every day. The Republic is being threatened. The Jedi must intervene. It's my duty—it's _our _duty to protect the defenseless."_

_Lines she'd never imgagined herself saying, justifications that were more worthy of an aged Councilmember were now coming out like they had always been there. She wondered if Master Kavar would be proud._

"_I understand, Master." Mical hesitated. "I can't—there's no way I could come with you, is there? Knight Malak's apprentice Bandon is joining him on—"_

_"No, Mical," Sarii interrupted gently. "I'm going to the front lines. Ground combat. That's no place for a Padawan."_

_Ever the perfect exemplar of the Code, Mical's face displayed none of the disappointment Sarii could feel. "I understand, Master," he repeated. His voice sounded much older than he was._

_She tried to smile encouragingly, like a Master to a Padawan, even though she barely knew her Padawan beyond observation and the ceremony that had bound them together. "You're still my Padawan, Mical. When I return, we'll pick up where we left off. Becoming a Knight isn't as structured as becoming a Padawan. You won't be behind anyone, I promise."_

_Mical nodded. "I'll keep practicing, in the meantime."_

_Sarii squeezed his shoulder, patting him on the back awkwardly. "That's the spirit." She drew back, turning to leave._

_She would never forget his face, his features frozen in a mask of ambivalence that did nothing to quiet the small storm of desolution in the Force. Like he was worried. Like he was upset. Like his nightmares had come true._

In the cockpit of the_ Ebon Hawk_, Atton Rand shrugged, turning the chair back towards the instrument panel and lazily wiping a smudge from one of the screens. "He seems fine to me. Knows the Code and how to focus a crystal and all that other bantha fodder." The smudge on the screen grew larger from the grime underneath his thumb.

"You don't understand."

"Yeah," the pilot scoffed, "I don't know from Jedi, right?"

"No, you…you don't understand the relationship between a Master and a Padawan—"

"_Yeah? Maybe you'll believe this: that when fighting a Jedi, you wound the Padawan first, then let the rest take care of itself. Not only will the master move to protect the student, but the Force bond between the two will mess up the master's head better than any stab wound."_

"Sometimes I don't think you've changed, Atton." The words forced themselves out from where they'd been hiding behind her lips for years. "From Remli Prime."

Atton's gaze narrowed. The sneer on his face and the furrows between his eyebrows didn't match the numbers still ticking away in his head, faster and more furious now than before. _Plus two pazaak makes nineteen, minus two makes seventeen, plus one—_

He rose from the pilot's chair, walking around the bulkhead separating it from the copilot's chair, where Sarii sat. His hands clasped the armrests, leaning over her, trapping her there.

"Sure." His face was centimeters from hers. "That explains why we're not still in that cell listening to you scream."

He stayed there for a moment, the cockpit silent except for Sarii's deliberately even breathing. Atton finally pushed himself off the armrests and stalked out of the room.

She could feel her stomach return to its original position, her heart tentatively creeping out of her throat. Sarii exhaled, running her fingers back through her hair and over her face.

_"For having spent his life hunting Jedi, your pilot is remarkably attuned to our ways," Master Kavar commented. He was sitting in the pilot's chair that Atton had so recently vacated, arms folded as he stared out the cockpit window._

_"You can't hunt something without understanding it," Sarii replied, her head turned in the opposite direction. Staring at the corridor Atton had just disappeared down._

_"True enough." Kavar glanced sideways at her. "But do you still believe Atton Rand is a hunter? A killer?"_

"People say killing Jedi is hard." Atton Rand's tone was almost conversational, as if they were discussing how to realign an alluvial damper. "It's not, you just have to be smart about it. There's ways of gassing them, drugging them, making them lose control, torturing them…I was really good at it."

His eyes were glowing, glittering, almost dreamily. "What's worse, is that killing them wasn't the best thing. Making them fall…making them see our side of it, that was the best."

_Sarii shivered. Kavar was watching her like her response would determine some important part of her destiny that he could see and she couldn't. Like there was some grave decision to make that had an invisible trigger. Like she was something broken that he was trying to fix._

_Like she was a wound that needed to be healed._

_"I don't know," she snapped suddenly. "Atton doesn't let me in. He doesn't let anyone in. He's good at putting walls up. Sometimes even the Jedi on his side didn't even know he was there."_

_Kavar nodded. His silence seemed to imply some failure, a last chance, a lost opportunity. It made her feel guilty and wrong and bad._

_"You're dead, Master," Sarii added, rising from the chair. "What can you see that I can't? What could you see when you were alive, for that matter? So you and the Council were right about the Mandalorian Wars. That doesn't change the fact that you were wrong about me. You tried to kill me. You and Master Vrook and Master Kai-El tried to kill me, and you were wrong. And now you're dead—"_

_She realized she was leaning over the bulkhead separating the chairs, leering in Kavar's cold, blue, incorporeal face. He blinked calmly at her before answering._

"_Death lends a certain perspective on life. My death was in vain."_

_She watched her Master's face grow taut and controlled, like it did during battles or particularly heated confrontations they had come up against in her training._

_"Sometimes the truth is more damaging than the lies, Sarii. Our intentions were good, as yours were. We believed the sacrifice- the sacrifice of your connection to the Force, was a necessary one. We acted without consideration, without due course."_

_"This threat you are on a journey to battle convinced us of this falsehood. It changed the nature of our thoughts, twisted the meaning of being a Jedi. This goes beyond Atton Rand, beyond yourself and the war, beyond Revan and her Admiral."_

_He paused. "Though, like it or not, you will have to meet her again."_

_Sarii sank back into her chair. "I _don't_ like it," she mumbled. Outside the cockpit window, the destiny Kavar could see and she couldn't was speeding towards her, a blur of stars leading inevitably to Verte, inevitably to Revan._

_She could barely get her voice above a whisper. "I haven't made a real choice since the Wars." Did that matter when this was all in her head? "But I was right."_

The shudder of the _Ebon Hawk_ as it dropped out of lightspeed jolted Sarii out of the Force. She sat up straight, searching the instrument panel for whatever the beeping alert was trying to tell her until the shadow that fell over the panel told her instead.

The planet filling the cockpit window was a swirling vortex of brown and black, not unlike Coruscant but without the pattern of white city lights and blinking yellow docking corridors. The Force skittered across its surface every now and then, like a stone skipping over a calm lake.

Verte sat before them. Revan sat before her. And Sarii didn't have a choice.


	20. Chapter 19

It didn't look like much. Certainly not something he'd been anticipating, waiting for, promising himself was worth these last few months of wandering through the dangerous Unknown Regions with a ragtag group of mercenaries and Jedi, including his own son after having left his own daughter behind.

To Carth's eyes, Verte was strangely inverted. Land masses of either cobalt or charred ash spread across a severe brown sky that almost seemed orange on the side of the planet where it was day.

How long were their days? How long were Katrina's? How many of them had she passed here, and how many did she have left—

Carth steered his attention back to the task at hand— figuring out where the hell to land the _Chaser_. Dustil sat in the co-pilot's seat next to him, brow furrowing as his eyes scanned and rejected the possible landing sites suggested by the nav system.

"Here's one," he finally said, pointing to a spot on the rotating holomap. "It's about thirty kilometers away from this large complex. Some plains surrounded by rock formations. There's a few trees, so watch it."

"A few trees," Carth repeated to himself, trying not to remember Rakatan water or Tarisian debris—_or hell, even asteroids—_ flying at him from every direction. Landing or taking off without really knowing what lay ahead wasn't an ideal situation for any pilot, let alone on a planet that supposedly held not only his missing wife, but a lost species of ancient Sith capable of things unimaginably terrible.

A flock of tri-winged birds scattered up in front of the cockpit window, but aside from that there was no interruption to the _Jedi Chaser_'s smooth landing. The _Ebon Hawk _touched down slightly behind her, a little less smoothly if the rattle of the metal flooring beneath Carth's feet was any indication.

He exhaled, running a hand through his hair and leaning back in his seat. "Well, we're here." He put his hands on each armrest and pushed himself up out of the chair. "Let's get over to the _Hawk_, see what we have in terms of firepower and then start on some approach strategy—"

"Father—" Dustil was still sitting in his chair, staring out at the large rock formation that blocked their view of the complex that supposedly lay on the other side. After a moment more, he turned to look up at Carth. "We still don't know what we're going to find in there. It's not going to be like anything you've encountered before, and definitely nothing like what you're expecting."

What Carth was expecting was the end of all this. One way or another.

"It might not be anything like what you and she encountered on Chael either," he pointed out. "Let's keep an open mind here."

His son cocked an eyebrow. "I am. And I'm ready for the possibility that this might go from being a rescue to a euthanization."

The word made the twisting in Carth's gut (constant and churning since Remli Prime) that much tighter. "I'm ready for that too." _And I'm not going to let it happen._

Dustil sighed and shook his head, standing up and putting his arm through the other side of his robe. "Sure you are."

A little bit of cynicism he could take. Paranoia he could even sympathize with. Complete pessimism just made Carth irritated. "We're here now, Dustil. It's a little late to be telling me to get prepared."

His son scoffed. "There's no way to _prepare _for the Sith, Father. Trust me, I took tests and classes and everything."

"Helpful," Carth muttered, loading both blasters into their holsters.

"Just…whatever we see in there, think twice about it, all right?"

The whole reason they were here was because he'd thought twice about things. Twice about trusting people, and then twice about shutting everybody out. Twice about losing his son, and then twice about whether he'd really gotten him back or not.

Twice about Katrina— _Revan_, the former Sith Lord who couldn't remember setting events in motion that led to the destruction of Telos and Morgana's death.

"_Don't _think about Mom." Dustil's voice was harsh, directive. "I told you that."

"Why? What does your mother have to do with any of this?"

"Because _I _can tell you're thinking about her," his son snapped. "And if _I _can tell, _they _can tell. And if _they _can tell…" He shook his head again. "They'll use her, Father. They'll use her against you, to make you do things and think things that you would never…"

He trailed off into his lightsaber, which he held under his chin for a moment while he tucked in his shirt.

"Dustil—" His son wasn't making sense, and Carth didn't understand, and not understanding was making him tense at a time when he needed to be as focused as possible. "Look, I'll keep my mouth shut and my blasters up and follow your lead, all right? I know I don't have the Force and I haven't seen what the Sith can do like you and the other Jedi have. I don't know what happened to you on Korriban—"

"This isn't like Korriban. Master Uthar and Master Yuthura could fry me or strangle me as much as they wanted and it still wouldn't have changed what I thought or what I remembered." He stepped past Carth, reaching for the tangled belt of supplies and tools lying on the floor and picking what he thought he needed out of it.

The thought of anyone frying or strangling Dustil tempered Carth's impatience, but only for a moment. "Then what the hell are you so worried about?"

"Because these Sith _can_. They don't have to hurt you or threaten to hurt anyone you care about. They make you believe they did. They make you believe _you_—"

His son straightened up, standing motionless with his back to the brown and black landscape outside of the window. Then his head turned and he stared over his shoulder at Carth

"Don't think about Mom." His voice held everything Carth thought he'd been carrying alone. "Because they can kill her again, Father. They can make the Sith do it. They can make the Jedi do it. They can make Revan or me or even—"

The way Dustil's head quickly turned away to face the nav screens, the way his eyes broke contact with Carth's on the word 'even' made it clear who he'd watched kill his mother.

_A thin cloud of white dust and ash floated around him, remnants of an imploded building whose remains were lying all over the courtyard. Most of the largest pieces of wall and floor had broken up upon hitting the ground into much smaller ones, and it was something like a quicksand as Carth climbed over them._

Have to get home, have to find Morgana, have to find Dustil-

_Every time he thought he saw the spot where their house had been, it turned out to be the scattered ruins of another. Personal effects were strewn among the rubble. He could hear random commands being shouted from one member of his task force to the other, but Carth kept going, and eventually the voices died down._

_When he finally rounded the corner it was eerily silent except for the sound of his own panting and his boots stamping across the dust and debris. Something cracked under his foot, and he bent to inspect it._

_He recognized his own face flickering in the broken holocube. Morgana and Dustil's faces were spotty blurs around its cracked screen. Carth looked up at the mountain of steel and plaster before him and recognized the empty shell of their living room; the cratered pit of their bedroom. Something caught in his throat. _

Have to find Morgana, have to find Dustil-

_As he struggled to work it out, he noticed a thin human hand lying flat and motionless atop the piles of crumbling foundation and half-standing walls that had once formed a line of homes._

_It looked so emaciated that at first he thought it belonged to a skeleton or a decomposing body. It wasn't until the glint of the small metal ring around one of the fingers caught his eye that he realized the body wasn't skeletal. It wasn't decomposing either. _

_Carth raced over through the chalky clouds, digging frantically through the rocks. Her eyes were what he uncovered first, though her long hair was tangled and strewn across them; blue eyes that were dull and pale like the thick white soot on the rocks around him. Dried blood and dirt caked her neck and half of her face._

_Carth finally managed to pull the last of the rocks off of her upper body, trembling hands pulling the hair off of her dirty cheeks._

Have to find Morgana-

_He had found her. Her eyes were closed and she wasn't moving._

_"No, no," he choked as he frantically began digging again, tossing rocks he hadn't known he had the strength to lift over his shoulders like pebbles._

_"Medic!" he screamed, hearing his voice echo worthlessly against the ruins of the colony. "I need a medic here now!"_

_He had cleared everything off her upper body, but her lower- he gulped, trying not to become queasy, though he had never seen anything remotely this bloody even on the battlefield. _

_The large pieces of their home, pieces he recognized to be that of the walls to Dustil's room- _I should have torn that wall down years ago, _he thought, a sudden irrational hatred for everything material that had been destroyed or blown up coming over him- that wall that hadn't managed to crack into smaller pieces had crushed Morgana's legs. Dark splotches of blood seeping out from under the boulder were the only indication that any legs had once been under the immovable rock at all._

_Carth leaned over her, touching her bruised cheeks gingerly, running his fingers through her tangled hair and pulling them out filthy and bloody. He half-thought he imagined it when she stirred, groaning softly, blinking a few times like that might clear the dust and filth from her eyes._

"_Morgana…" He grasped her wrist, trying to massage the cold hand back into life._

_It was only then, only as he was still holding onto her hand- so thin and frail, like his son's had been when he was a baby rather than a grown woman's- that he realized he was too late._

"Dustil—" The very idea of himself killing Morgana was almost as unfathomable as Dustil having seen it and—even if only for a moment—believed it was true.

"And it'll look real," Dustil finally continued, looking up again. "It'll look so real that you'll think it happened even though you know you would never do what you're watching yourself doing. You'll start to wonder if that's actually what you did and you just don't remember."

Carth swallowed. "That's not what I did. That's not what happened." Though it had felt like it in the months and years to follow.

"I know. It's hard to remember that when you're watching it happen in front of you like you're in a sim-vid, though." His son cleared his throat, running his hand back through his hair to hide a quick pass at his eyes. "So don't think about her. Don't think about anything you care about. Sith don't respect things like that. It gets in the way of being a Sith."

It was the first time his son had ever spoken of something the Sith had done without Carth wondering if Dustil had done it too. He didn't need to wonder— he was his mother's son.

He reached out and gripped Dustil's shoulder, squeezing tightly enough that it probably hurt. "We'll stop them, Dustil. We won't let them reach the Republic. They'll never have a chance to do that to anyone else."

"Right." His son nodded grimly. "Just don't let yourself become their last gunla pig."

* * *

"So, should I be packing anything special for this trip?" Mira asked, slipping her wrist-launcher over her wrist and flexing her fingers against the leather. "Biochemical ordinance, melee weapons, a bikini?"

"As long as you keep your eyes and ears open, we should be fine," Sarii replied, trying to find a place to store her lightsaber on her armor. "And don't believe everything you see."

Whether Mira or anyone else would be watching Revan closely wasn't really that important. Sarii was ready to shoot if the Dark Lord had so much as a patch of pale skin.

"What is it you expect to see, Master?" Mical asked, glancing up from where he stood near the doorway, already suited up and ready to go. "Or not to see?"

Sarii finally found a spot on her belt to fasten her saber. The click was satisfying. "Revan, Mical. One way or another."

Admiral Onasi and his son were already waiting in the _Ebon Hawk_'s main hold when they got there. Atton was slouching in one of the chairs, his hands folded behind his head and his legs stretched out and crossed in front of him.

"Good." The Admiral cleared his throat. "Let's get started." He loaded a datapad into the center display console. After a moment of buzzing, it began to emit what looked like a hastily compiled display from the _Chaser_'s sensors and nav maps.

"We know there's a large complex on the other side of this rock formation," Admiral Onasi began, tracing the flickering outline of the formation with his finger. "There are a few ships docked in isolation at points around the complex, but we can't get a reading on any of their signatures."

"So what you're saying is we don't really know if Revan's here or not," Atton murmured.

Onasi narrowed his eyes at the pilot but ignored him. "The heat sensors aren't picking up any organic guards or patrolmen around the complex, but we'll have to keep our eyes open for droids, or anything else that might not come up on the scanners."

Mira's arms were folded under one incredulously lifted eyebrow. "We're just going to storm the castle, then? A castle full of mysterious, powerful Sith?"

"No, we're going to scout out the layout and defenses of the complex and then make our next move," Dustil Onasi answered. "Either way, I doubt they're going to answer if we knock."

"I didn't come out here for a suicide mission," the Admiral added. "If push comes to shove, I'll go in after her myself. I won't force any of you to risk your lives for something that's not important to you."

Sarii had to resist the urge to look away when his gaze landed on her.

"I think protecting the galaxy from being enslaved by hypnotized, backwards Sith who call themselves Jedi is in everybody's best interests," Atton said, finally unfolding his legs and rising to his feet, stretching his arms behind his head. He removed his blasters from their holsters and flipped each once in the hand before replacing them. "So, shouldn't we get moving before we lose daylight? Or the cover of night, or whatever time of day a brown sky means?"

* * *

The tunnels and valleys through and around the rock formations weren't guarded by any droids, but they were infested with plenty of kinrath. Sarii didn't really mind. It was easier not thinking of what lay ahead when you were preoccupied with what was in front of you.

"Perhaps kinrath are originally from the Unknown Regions as well," Mical said conversationally, stabbing a kinrath cleanly through its middle and stepping over it. "Origination on Verte might explain their hostile nature."

Mira side-stepped a kinrath's stabbing arm and blasted it twice in the head. "Yeah, well, I think it's a little short-sighted to assume that everything mean and nasty comes from the Sith."

Atton was trailing behind the rest of them along with Dustil Onasi, who kept his eyes straight ahead and swung his lightsaber out occasionally to take down a kinrath without even looking.

"She's right," the pilot added. "Mean and nasty things come in all sorts of packaging. If you're the kind of person who thinks mean and nasty is a permanent, constant state of being."

This time, Sarii resisted the urge to glance over her shoulder at him, afraid to see what kind of probably-true accusation might be in his eyes.

_Can he blame me? Would anyone blame me?_

_You would not question your feelings towards Atton Rand if you did not in some way find them unjustified. _Kavar's voice was muted on Verte, an echo in her head rather than a voice.

Which feelings those were—revulsion at his past or undeniable attraction—Sarii decided not to think about right now.

Mical hissed and bit his tongue on a curse as he took a wrong step into a large puddle of black liquid. Someone behind her stifled a laugh.

"Verte is an unknown world," her Padawan shot back over his shoulder. "This material may be abrasive or poisonous, for all we know."

"I think it's just water, Mical," Admiral Onasi replied, making no attempt to hide his grin.

For some reason, his and anyone else's mirth irritated Sarii. Mical was the only one who seemed to realize the seriousness of the situation ahead. The potential danger of what they might find. The inevitability of what they _would _find, eventually—

Just around the next bend, Sarii could make out a faint whirring sound not unlike a patrolling assault drone floating through the air. She held her hand up to the party behind her, lifting her lightsaber and waiting for whatever it was to round the corner.

The whirring turned into the sound of mechanical joints struggling to bend. The echo of a single syllable being repeated over and over began to echo throughout the cavern. "Wel-wel-wel-wel…"

A sparking, badly damaged protocol droid emerged, crawling on one arm and pushing itself with two half-legs. Sarii lowered her lightsaber.

"At least it's not HK," Dustil said, stepping past all of them to inspect the droid.

His father sighed, flipping his blaster back into its holster. "I think I might have preferred that."

The droid's voice went up and down in pitch as Dustil fiddled with the exposed wiring in its head. Mira stood over him with her assault rifle resting across her shoulder. "Bao-Dur would have had this thing walking with a spring in its step if he were here," she murmured, glancing up at Sarii with a sad smile.

"Who's Bao-Dur?" Dustil asked, turning his head to the side to avoid a slight spray of oil.

"Our engineer," Mical murmured.

"He died on Malachor," Sarii added. "When the _Ebon Hawk _crash-landed."

It took a moment longer for the awkwardness of the silence that followed to hit Sarii than it had for the others.

"Geeze, is all you can mention the times the _Hawk _crashed while I was flying it?" Atton finally grumbled.

The droid's one lone eye grew intensely bright for a moment and then grew dim again.

Dustil shook his head and twisted another cord. "This thing needs to be put out of its misery."

"I know a Jawa who probably would have liked the chance to fix it too," Admiral Onasi murmured, glancing across the cavern at Mira.

"A Jawa?" the bounty hunter repeated.

"My daughter," the Admiral answered. "Our daughter, actually. Her name's Celyn. She's five…well, I guess six in another month or so."

"Revan's got a kid?"

_So she's breeding now, _Sarii thought moodily._ Force help that child, she's probably screwed up beyond belief-_

"There was no one else to take her, so I had to leave her in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. I hope she doesn't hate me too much for it."

Mira smirked. "I don't suppose you're one of those average fathers with a holo in their back pocket? You know, the Admiral kind who regularly goes on hunts for former Sith Lords in uncharted regions—"

The Admiral sheepishly pulled out a small holocube from the pouch on the side of his belt.

"It goes with me during stints on the _Sojourn_. I didn't see any reason to stop that practice on this trip."

A pretty little girl with Onasi's brown eyes and Dustil's tapered chin grinned in delight as she spun around on the Admiral's palm. She looked about three or four in the recorded holocube projection.

"Celyn," a woman's voice laughed. "Stop spinning around and hold still—"

_Revan. That's Revan's voice._

Celyn and her bouncing brown curls (the hair was Revan's; Sarii remembered her braid swinging back and forth down the halls of the Jedi Temple, the loose strands of hair that popped free and curled around the Jedi's neck) ran straight up to the holocamera, giggling until the recording ended and the little girl's image dissolved back into the holocube.

"She's…adorable," Sarii managed to offer politely.

Onasi snorted, narrowing his eyes at her as he tucked the holocube back into his pouch.

"You sound pretty surprised. Did you think any kids she'd have would turn out deformed and twisted with two heads or something?"

The heat on her face was enough to make Sarii grateful for the darkness of the cave. Then neither Mira nor the Admiral could see her furious blushing.

The droid at their feet twitched suddenly, and the repeated syllable jolted into a full sentence. "S-statement: my master requires the information contained in your otherwise useless central processor. Prepare to be sh-shut down—"

All of the droid's joints went stiff and rigid for a moment, and then collapsed lifeless to the floor, his one eye now dark and off-line.

Admiral Onasi sighed. "Be careful what I wish for."

Dustil pushed himself up from kneeling over the droid, wiping his hands on his pants. "Hey, at least this means HK's been taking care of himself, which probably means he's been taking care of Revan."

"This droid looks far less like an HK droid and far more like an HK droid attacked it," Mical pointed out.

Sarii nodded. "With Revan and HK together again, that sounds about right." She turned and started walking towards the end of the tunnel.

The aggravated noise forced through the Admiral's closed mouth and nostrils told her she hadn't said it casually or quietly enough.

"Listen, Sarii," Onasi snapped, catching up to her. His blatant informality almost stung. "I'm getting pretty sick and tired of this—"

"Sick and tired of this? Of what? Having someone around who's fought in her war? Having someone around that hasn't conveniently forgotten what she did to the galaxy—"

"You think I don't know what she did?" The Admiral's memories hit Sarii like a tidal wave and she physically stumbled. "You think I don't know that she turned trusted men over to her side, practically crushed the Republic, destroyed Telos and… and killed innocent people?"

His eyes were hard like the black and brown rock that surrounded them.

"I _know_, Master Jedi," Onasi finished tiredly. "But…she and I…we've started our lives over together, we have Celyn and Dustil and Telos…and all I want to do is bring her back and fix it."

He sighed with the weight of the Republic and a lifetime of sorrow Sarii knew even her deepest pain couldn't touch.

"I'm just trying to put my family back together, Sarii. I'm not going to fail them again."

He turned his back on her and continued ahead, past a few tall moss-green tree trunks standing outside the end of the tunnel.

Sarii followed, trying to maintain equal distance between the Admiral and her Padawan, trailing in her peripheral vision. Neither option—walking sheepishly next to someone she'd wronged or self-righteously next to someone she was supposed to be an example for—was appealing. Maybe falling back next to Atton was where she belonged, as long as she couldn't find a compromise between hate and who to direct it at—

She very nearly collided with Onasi's raised hand, indicating to the rest of them to stop. He pointed up ahead to where the valley between the rock formations they were traveling down broke into flat, open plain. More important than the plain was what it revealed—the Sith complex.

Together they crept down the path until the valley ended and the plain began, exposing a large docking platform bordered on two sides by an immense but otherwise nondescript structure. There were no windows, balconies, or outside access points to be seen.

After barely a moment's pause, Admiral Onasi began to head towards the complex

"Perhaps any entrances or exits are located elsewhere," Mical called after him, in as loud a whisper as possible. "They may not even have traditional doors, if they really are an entirely different species—"

Dustil Onasi brushed past him, following his father. Sarii finally noticed a small ship, only slightly larger than a fighter, sitting at the far corner of the docking platform.

"Must be Revan's ship," Mira said, hefting her assault rifle in her hands and starting after them.

"Must that mean we go running towards it like its open season on non-Sith?" Atton added mockingly, sighing and motioning to Sarii with his chin to go ahead of him.

No alarms or sirens went off when they reached the platform, and no one appeared to greet them once they neared the ship, which sat uncomfortably close to the building. The gangplank was down already, as if inviting them to board.

_Maybe it's a trap. Revan's good with traps—_

The Admiral stopped, lifting his blasters and moving to stand along the hull of the ship. His son crept to the other side, each inching closer to the gangplank. Sarii, Mical, Atton and Mira surrounded the entryway.

Onasi peered around the hull and up the gangplank. Sarii couldn't make out anything inside, except a faint glow as if someone had left a few cabin lights on. That was apparently enough for the Admiral, who nodded across the way to his son and then strode up the gangplank. Sarii let the others go ahead of her before finally following.

The ship was as small on the inside as it looked on the outside, with only a cockpit and a small open space leading to the engine room, a door to what was probably a 'fresher or a cabin, and the lowered gangplank. A few computer screens were still on, but other than that the ship looked deserted.

"Katrina?" Onasi called. There was no answer.

"Maybe we should check out the ship's systems," Dustil said. "She might have made some logs, or the nav screens will show us where else she's been."

"Maybe this is a trap and a whole armada of creepy crawly Sith are waiting for us down at the other end of the gangplank—"

"Shh," Mira hissed, interrupting Atton. There was a muffled noise from the engine room, following by whirring that grew louder and louder by the second.

Onasi, Mira, and Atton lifted their blasters. Mical, Dustil, and Sarii extended their lightsabers.

A pair of droid legs emerged out of the darkness of the engine room's doorway. They were followed by the rest of T3, who immediately backed up into the wall behind him with a series of startled beeps at the sight of their drawn weapons.

"T3." The Admiral didn't sound very relieved.

"Frack, announce yourself next time," Mira said, lowering her wrist-launcher.

The droid made an indignant series of noises indicating that he had been in the middle of a self-diagnostic and repair.

"Well, sorry to disturb you," Dustil Onasi replied, one side of his mouth lifted. "Not like you're doing anything _important _out here that we need to know about."

"Where's the hunter-killer droid?" Atton asked, looking around warily.

"Where's Revan, for that matter?" Mical added.

"I programmed you to follow her," Carth Onasi told T3, whose domed top was spinning from turning to acknowledge each speaker. "Where is she?"

It was a full minute before the droid finished beeping his reply.

"He says Revan began shutting him down when she became aware he was attempting to follow her," her Padawan translated. "She leaves the ship each morning at a prescribed hour accompanied by HK and returns each evening at around the same time. Last evening, however, she did not return."

The Admiral was silent for a moment. "Do you know how she gets into the complex? Have you seen whoever's inside? Has she or HK said or told you anything about what goes on in there?"

T3 shook his head mournfully, speaking in beeps and buzzes again.

"If she has encrypted whatever information she has been gathering, it is unlikely we would be able to open it within an acceptable window of time," Mical said. "We would need privacy to decode it at our leisure."

"Or Revan to give us the code herself," Mira added. "Straight from the hessi's mouth is always better than backhanded from the donkey's hoof."

"We could just, I don't know, wait for her to come back," Atton said, plopping himself down in the pilot's chair. "Sounds like a little more stable of a plan then trying to find an entrance to a building that doesn't look like it has any, or walking blind into a fight with enemies we don't know anything about."

Onasi ran a hand through his hair. "T3, you said last night Katrina didn't come back. Has that ever happened before?"

The droid beeped a negative reply.

"What is she like when she comes back out of there? Are they hurting her?"

There was a pause uncharacteristic to a droid before T3 answered.

"She appears tired," Mical repeated. "Exhausted and…different, somehow. His language is difficult to read."

The droid had trailed off in code and noise too hurried and high pitched for anyone to follow. The way the rest of him didn't seem quite as agitated made Sarii think T3 knew more than he was telling.

"We need to get inside and find her," Onasi said, looking up at them.

"Without knowing how many are inside? Without knowing what they're capable of?" Atton rolled his eyes. "Wow, sir, you really are one of the brilliant strategists I always knew made up the Republic brass."

"No one's asking you to come, Rand," Dustil replied.

"And even if you were, I'm still not entirely convinced I want to start sticking my neck out for you—"

"Slow down, boys," Mira interrupted, putting her hands up. "Let's think this thing through. We can't all go barging in there. At least one gun and one Jedi should stay out here in case the Sith don't exactly welcome us. As much as I love a good party, I'm happy to sit this one out. Unless you want to stay behind, Rand." She cocked an eyebrow at him. "You sound a little scared."

The pilot snorted. "I'm not _scared, _I'm smart. There's a difference. I'll go."

Admiral Onasi nodded. "Mical? Sarii?"

Sarii knew the right answer, the answer a Jedi who truly lived by the ideals of no emotion and redemption for all would give. She knew her responsibility on this mission: to gather information and intelligence on a potential Sith threat to Republic space. To do that required her to actually observe and interact with that Sith threat, regardless of whether it might include helping Revan— or fighting her.

But still, her mouth refused to move.

"Mical's got Republic Intel experience," Atton finally said. "Think you're up for another information-gathering expedition?"

"I'm here as a Jedi Padawan, not as an intelligence officer," Mical answered, but he glanced sideways at her. _I will follow your instructions, Master_.

It took barely a moment for Sarii to make her choice.

"He's right, Mical," she replied. "You'd write a better report than I ever could. Go with them."

Her Padawan nodded, looking at the Onasis expectantly.

"We're not going to hang around in there any longer than it takes to find Katrina," the Admiral said, crossing to the cockpit's control panel and hitting a few buttons. "Use the ship's sensors to track us, and give us a warning on the comm if you see anything coming our way."

He removed his blasters, glancing at his son, who returned the quick nod and lead the way down the gangplank. The Admiral and Mical followed, and Atton shrugged his eyebrows at Sarii and Mira before heading out of the ship.

"Good luck," Sarii called after them.

"The boys on their way to fight, and the girls left at home to watch the droids and the ship." Mira snorted. "And they say chivalry is dead."

* * *

It was an almost embarrassingly short amount of time before they were captured.

Carth was too busy hating himself to be embarrassed. He should have known, from the way an entrance magically appeared and opened for them. An open door policy at your enemy's stronghold fairly screamed trap.

He saw them coming before Mira and Sarii did, and he silenced the comm rather than alert the surprisingly human guards who, after a short firefight, surrounded them and took their weapons without saying a word.

To him, anyway. The color had drained from Dustil's face despite the stubborn rigidity of his features. Mical looked like he was concentrating hard on something. None of Atton's protests or quips got any verbal reaction as the three men were led away, separated from Carth.

He struggled to remind himself that if they were going to kill them, they would have done it already. A voice he was trying desperately to silence in his head told him there were worse things for Jedi than death.

He tried to keep an eye out for Katrina or HK as the Sith marched him past glossy black hallway after glossy black hallway, but there wasn't a soul in sight, except for the octet escorting him to wherever was their final destination.

There hadn't been any other option. Katrina was in here, somewhere, and she hadn't come out for at least a day. Carth wasn't about to wait and see what "different" meant if he could help it.

_Still, if you were going to go on a suicide mission, you didn't have to bring your son and two other people, did you, old man?_

The guards stopped in front of what looked to Carth like a wall of black rock. To his surprise, the guards walked straight _at _it, as if it wasn't there. He blinked and jerked under their grip right when he thought he was about to hit it, but when his eyes opened again they were in a large room.

_Must be a hologram, or a force field disguised somehow—_

There wasn't time to think about it. In front of him stood a dozen tall, dark red-skinned creatures with elongated limbs and facial features. These were the Sith. The _true _Sith.

Several of them wore robes or cloaks that covered their faces, so Carth could only assume they were the same species as the ones with exposed heads from their height and body shape. One completed cloaked figure was shorter than the others, but no less imposing or silent.

The guards in front of him parted and stepped back with the others.

"Admiral Onasi," the creature finally greeted. Its voice sounded male, with a slight hiss behind each word.

Dustil had said they were capable of things he couldn't imagine. They would take your memories, your thoughts, your words, and twist them to use against you.

_Don't say anything, _Carth told himself, glaring silently at them._ Don't confirm their information, just let them think you're some unlucky spacer who crash-landed here—_

"Strange that a Republic official has wandered so far from known space."

He didn't like this. Something didn't feel right, and years of life experience told him that it was more than the fact that he was in the middle of a Sith stronghold surrounded by their most powerful members.

The creature cocked his head to the side, studying Carth. He turned towards the other cloaked creatures around him as if consulting them with his gaze alone. He seemed to linger on the shorter one wearing the mask.

_Don't say anything, don't think anything, just stand here and be quiet, be silent, be smart-_

"Nevertheless, welcome, Admiral," the creature finished. "I believe we have something you've been looking for."

His head shot up. His jaw dropped before he could think of things like concealing his identity, protecting the Republic.

"Don't worry, Admiral. Your search wasn't in vain."

All of it fell flat against this new voice; a low, straightforward soprano even through the mask.

He recognized that stance easily now- the way she stood with her head slightly tilted downward, the way one hand barely grazed her lightsaber and the other lay flat at her side.

She made no move towards him; made no sign of greeting or surprise or any kind of emotional reaction. But he knew without words, without being able to see her face:

Revan the Dark Lord turned Jedi Master; Katrina the Consular with a green lightsaber; his wife, his daughter's mother, his son's Master- both of them, all of them, stood before him.

"Katrina?" Carth finally managed to sputter.

None of them reacted. It was unsettling. He felt like he should say it again.


	21. Chapter 20

"Hold still--"

The little boy was squirming again, distracted. It made it harder for Lydie to concentrate on the Force, harder to trace it to a single sentient and measure the amount, determine the origin--

"Do you speak Basic?" Lydie murmured, opening one eye and smirking. The little boy giggled, a Twi'lek with still short, stubby green lekku. Lydie took that to mean that he did.

If he spoke it, he ignored it too. The little boy clambered up from where he had been sitting and ran off to join the rest of the children playing in the apprentice wards.

Strong in the Force. Then again, they all were. No child was brought to the Jedi Temple unless they were confirmed Force-sensitive or at least showed signs that they might be. When they only showed signs that they might be, it was up to med-droids, the Council, and good old-fashioned feelings to determine whether the Force was really there or not.

And the responsibility of stretching out with their feelings usually fell on elder Padawans or newly appointed Jedi Knights like Lydie Korr.

She unfolded her legs from under her and stretched her arms behind her head, scanning the room for any apprentices arguing over a toy or sitting alone from the rest. The only child not with at least one or two others was the oddity in the room— the only definite Force-sensitive who not to be considered a potential apprentice. Celyn Onasi sat by the side of her bed, head bent down like she was either sad or busy with something.

Lydie pushed herself up from the floor, straightening her robes before walking over to where the little girl sat with her knees up against her chest, for once not busy dismantling a datapad or a lightsaber hilt.

"Hi, Celyn."

The Onasi girl looked up at her but didn't say anything.

"Some of the other apprentices are playing trin sticks," Lydie said, sitting down next to her. "I think they still need a fourth player."

Celyn shook her head. "I don't want to play." She rested her chin on top of her knees.

The little girl's feelings were fairly written on her forehead, but Lydie had found through her current role as apprentice caretaker that Celyn wasn't used to others being able to see inside her head, and reacted somewhat violently when people knew something she hadn't told them.

"Is something wrong?" she prompted the little girl instead.

"I miss my mommy and Father and Dustil. I want them to come back."

"Oh." Lydie nodded. "You know, most of the apprentices here haven't seen their parents or families since they came here. They probably miss them too. I missed mine, when I was an apprentice."

Celyn glanced sideways at her. "Where was your family?"

"Well, I'm Zabrak, so my family lived on Iridonia, which is the Zabrak homeworld."

"I know," the little girl replied defensively, even though she hadn't. "Zabraks have horns, and two hearts. And inden—indentations in their skin."

Lydie brushed the palm of her hand over the tips of her horns and across the curved indentations on her cheek self-consciously. "That's right. And most of us live in colonies all around the galaxy, except for the few that still live on Iridonia. But Iridonia's not a very nice place to live. The weather's bad, and everyone tries to farm but they don't make a lot of money, so sometimes parents like mine send their Force-sensitive children to the Jedi so they'll have a better life."

"My parents didn't _send _me here," Celyn insisted. "They're coming back."

But the little girl now placed her hands on top of her knees, partially obscuring the frown on her face. She'd been here for a few months now, and if her admiral father or her Jedi mother (the former Dark Lord Revan, it was whispered) were ever coming back, there hadn't yet been any word on when that might be.

"But you still miss them," Lydie added. "Just like all the other apprentices miss their parents. Instead of thinking about how they want to be home, though, they're learning new things and playing with each other."

"And getting visitors."

Both Celyn and Lydie looked up at the black-haired man standing over them. He was young, maybe not much older than mid-twenties, and there was a lightsaber hanging from his belt. But he was wearing civilian clothes, and Lydie had never seen him in the Temple before.

"Hello there," the man said, one side of his mouth lifted. The smirk went just a little more crooked when his eyes moved from Celyn to Lydie.

"Celyn, do you know this man?" she asked, looking at the little girl. Celyn shook her head.

The man scoffed, rolling his eyes. "You mean after whining like a baby mynock that he needed me to check up on his kid sister, Onasi didn't even tell you I was coming?"

Lydie pushed herself up from the floor. "Are you authorized to be here?"

"Are you?" the man answered back, stepping between where she stood and Celyn sat and plopping himself down on the small apprentice bed. "Dustil Onasi—this girl's half-brother—asked me to come."

Despite the clear patrician accent in his voice, the quick, defensive, street smart way he chose his words didn't seem very patrician to Lydie.

She lifted an eyebrow at him. "And who are you?"

The man cleared his throat, sitting up a little from his sloached position. "Uh, Mekel. Mekel Jin. I'm Dustil's friend."

"Dustil doesn't have any friends," Celyn said, glancing up at Lydie. "Except for Tova."

Mekel Jin laughed. "That's because your brother's whipped, Celyn. Can you spell whipped?"

Celyn's brow furrowed, making a crooked sort of squiggle between her eyes.

"I remember you now. You came to see us once, on Telos. Dustil told Father you're a smug son of a schutta."

Mekel snorted. "Well, you can tell Dustil that I said he's a self-righteous piece of—"

"The apprentices here range from three to six years old," Lydie interrupted quickly. "They really aren't used to outside visitors. We're taking very good care of Celyn while her parents are gone."

His eyebrows lifted in mock surprise. "My apologies, Miss…?"

"Knight Korr. Lydie. Lydie Korr." Her face felt warmer with every flubbed up introduction.

Mekel smirked as if pleased with himself. "Well, Knight Korr, don't take this the wrong way, but where Dustil and I come from isn't exactly a place where the ways of the Jedi are trusted."

"Where you come from? You mean Telos?"

"No, I—" Mekel paused, narrowing his eyes and leaning sideways to see around her. He groaned. "Oh, fracking fantastic—"

"Mekel?"

This time, it was HoloNet reporter Tova Vin walking over to them, with a not-so-camera-ready look on her face. Lydie wondered when the apprentice wards had become so popular.

"Swearing in front of children." The corner of the blonde's mouth twitched. "I can't really say I'm surprised."

"Hi, Tova," Celyn Onasi said.

Tova gave her a smile. "Hi there, sweetie. Everything all right? Is Mekel bothering you?"

"Is Mekel bothering you?" Mekel repeated in a mocking, high-pitched imitation of Tova's voice. "Don't you think I have better things to do with my time than hang around the bloody Jedi Temple daycare center? No offense, of course, to those who do," he added, glancing at Lydie again.

The blonde cocked an eyebrow, folding her arms. "I don't know. Do you?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact. But it was your feckless fiancé who asked— no, _begged _me to come make sure his little sister was all right while he went groping around blindly in the Unknown Regions. And me, being the charitable individual that I am, decided I would take time out of my busy schedule to do so."

Tova gave Mekel her now-trademark withering stare. "Remind me again why you're invited to my wedding."

"Oh, probably only because Dustil owes me for the ninth or tenth time I saved his hide on Korriban—"

"I don't think now is the best time for Celyn to have visitors," Lydie interrupted, stepping forward. "Especially not two of them."

Tova Vin gave her a perfect, white-toothed smile. "Fine with me. Mekel will have to come back later."

"Me?" Mekel put his arm smoothly around Lydie's shoulders. "We were having a perfectly fine visit before you showed up, weren't we?"

"_Enough_."

Lydie sincerely hoped Visas Marr was the last person who would be visiting the apprentice wards today. With half of her face concealed beneath the veil, the Miraluka's expressions were often hard to read, but her mouth was very clearly in an annoyed frown.

"Celyn and I have work to do," she told them, turning her head first from Tova, who folded her hands behind her back and managed to keep her chin up despite looking chastened, to Mekel, who instantly dropped his arm from Lydie's shoulders and cleared his throat into his hand.

"I apologize for interrupting, Master Jedi," Tova said, bowing slightly. "I'll come back tomorrow, Celyn." She gave the little girl a quick smile before turning and exiting down the hallway.

"Please show Mister Jin out, Knight Korr," the Miraluka said. Even with the veil, Lydie could still feel the direct stare that accompanied the order. She decided she would take the long way, through the meditation gardens. Visas didn't look like she wanted whatever work she was about to do to be interrupted.

She nodded. "Yes, Master Marr."

* * *

Visas waited until the Zabrak and Dustil's friend of questionable moral alignment (the uncertainty was a large black spot on him, obscured like it was censored from even the eyes of the Force) were gone to turn her gaze back to Celyn Onasi. The little girl pushed herself up from the floor and wrapped her arms around Visas before she could react.

"I missed you." Celyn tilted her head back to look up. "You haven't come to see me for a long time. Where were you?"

"I had a mission," Visas answered, trying to slowly extricate herself from the little girl's embrace. Touch for a Miraluka was a far more intense sense than it was for other sentients. Through Celyn's arms, Visas could feel all of her loneliness, brief excitement at having company, and growing uncertainty as to the fate of her family and, consequently, herself.

It was an emotional place Visas did not feel comfortable residing in. It too closely resembled places she had been before.

"Would you be interested in trying to see your mother again?" she asked. The Council had a summons waiting for her the moment she had landed in the Temple docks, anxious for an update on Revan's activity and the progress of Sarii and Admiral Onasi's mission.

Celyn nodded vigorously. "Maybe we'll see her on her way home." She sat back down, crossing her legs and wriggling until she was satisfied with her sitting position. Her eyes were already scrunched closed, but she kept opening one eye, looking to see if Visas was ready yet.

The corners of her mouth twitched, and Visas allowed them to turn into a smile as she seated herself across from the girl. A few of the other apprentices glanced up momentarily at them, but were easily distracted by their games or toys.

"Concentrate," Visas told Celyn. "Reach out with your mind, and try to see through the Force."

Within an instant, as if she had had the images queued up in her mind, the little girl found her mother.

_For a moment, all she could feel was angry. The anger was an acceptable emotion in this place, and Katrina latched onto it, fed it, tried to make it overshadow the tingle in her chest and the momentary arhythm of her heartbeat._

_Carth Onasi, _her _Carth Onasi, was still standing open-mouthed and gaping at her, the horror in his eyes fresh like they were back on the _Hawk _just moments after escaping the _Leviathan. _Far more open than his mouth was his mind, every thought and feeling he was having floating free in the air like he had consciously released them. Katrina could feel Sila and the others shifting, becoming more alert in preparation for what was coming._

"He found her!"

Visas winced at the sudden break in the vision, at the high pitched squeal from Celyn Onasi as she clapped her hands in delight.

"I knew he would! He promised he would," the little girl added excitedly. "Now he's going to bring her back—"

"Apparently you have not realized the gravity of the situation Revan is currently mired in," Visas snapped.

Celyn frowned.

"It doesn't matter if Mommy's stuck on that planet with Sith or if she was doing bad things anymore. Father's going to help her get out of there. He saves people all the time. He's a hero—"

"Your father is only a sentient, and an aging, stubborn sentient at that. He is surrounded by Force users more powerful than any Jedi in this Temple—"

"But he's _Father_," the child said forcefully, closing her eyes again. "He can do it."

"_Katrina," Carth repeated, swallowing. "What's going on here?"_

'_Katrina' gave Sila and the others the past, false as it was. It gave them the part of her life when she had really believed she was Katrina Taresi, Republic scout turned newly-inducted Jedi, who had fallen in love with Carth and helped him find his Sith son. More importantly, it brought them dangerously close to the part of her life when she had found out who she truly was, and the actual choices she had made since then._

"_Admiral—_" _She tried to make_ _'Admiral' sound the same to his ears as it did every time she said it; soft and teasing. "That isn't my name."_

"_Revan," Carth corrected, his voice hard. "What is going on?"_

"_Lord Revan was interested in learning the truth about the Jedi and the Force," Sila said. "Perhaps she did not have time to write."_

"_The truth?" Carth's panic was all over his face. "The _truth _is that they've got you brainwashed or…or converted, or whatever it is they do."_

"_Conversion is often done to make a thing more useful, to improve it." Sila's voice was all seduction and hiss. "Self-improvement should never be viewed as a negative thing."_

"_They terrorize this entire system," Carth snapped, ignoring Sila. "They're responsible for everything that goes on on Remli Prime. They took Dustil, Katrina. Does that sound like true Jedi behavior to you?"_

'_Dustil' exposed his love for his son, his worry over where he was and what was happening to him, his fear that whatever he thought had happened to her would repeat itself with him. 'Remli Prime' and 'true Jedi' were connected with disgust, exasperation, determination that the Republic and the Jedi Order—still safely concealed in systems unknown to Sila and the others—would come here and right those wrongs._

_The Republic and the Order and the systems they were in wouldn't be concealed for long if Carth kept talking._

Frack, Carth, please keep your mouth shut—

Celyn Onasi's eyes opened abruptly. "Why doesn't Mommy want Father to talk?"

"Admiral Onasi puts himself in a more perilous situation with every word he utters," Visas answered. "He is inadvertently giving the Sith information about himself—about you, your mother, Revan's Padawan—information the Sith will use to create nightmarish images that may make him forget why he is there."

"And he can't hear her because he doesn't have the Force," Celyn Onasi added, sucking in a breath and leaning forward with her hands on her knees. "She has to make him be quiet."

"_It's easy to mistake the effects of correctly applied power for terror," One of the others—Lord Pobeda—commented. Basic did not come as easily to his vocal cords as it did to Sila's, and his words were heavy with air like he was asthmatic. "Surely your son can illuminate you. He knows all too well what fate the powerless meet."_

_Carth glared at him, but turned back to Katrina. In his head, she could see what Dustil had told him about this place and these creatures finally coming back. "After everything we did, everything we went through with the others and the…the mission…"_

Yes, good, please Carth, realize what the hell you're doing and omit words like Star Forge and Telos and Celyn and Dustil—

"_Now you're just going to throw it all away? For what? This power they're showing you?" He was derisive but there was something wild and desperate in his eyes. "You're a _Jedi_, Revan. You didn't fall back before and I'm not going to let you do it now. You're my _wife_, and you're going to have to kill me before I leave you here—"_

"_Fall?" Maybe if she just talked over him, she could shock him into silence. "I haven't fallen, Carth. I now know so much more than I did before coming here. I've seen impossible things happen through the Force. That kind of knowledge can't be located anywhere other than on a higher plane."_

"_And is it worth it?" Carth demanded. "Is that worth throwing everything else away and letting the galaxy come close to destruction again because you want to find out something new and know more than everybody else?"_

"_Don't do this," he pleaded desperately. "I love you, and that…that might not mean anything to you, but _she _loves you, and I…I just can't accept that you'll turn your back on _her_ too—"_

_With the deliberate emphasis he was putting on 'she' and 'her', Katrina wondered why he didn't just come out and tell them every childhood story he had about Celyn. She struggled to keep them out of his head, to keep them away from following the train of thought._

Frack, frack, damn fracking hell, Carth, shut up—

"_You turned your back on her once too, Admiral," Sila murmured. "Didn't you?"_

_Carth's head turned, and for an instant, Katrina could see it happening: him struggling to make sense of what Sila was implying, unwittingly giving Sila something to work with. _It's not real, Carth. None of this is real—

"_Shut up," he finally snapped, turning back to Katrina. She felt her rapid heartbeat relax slightly._

"_Now I don't know what they've done to you, or what they've showed you, but I'm here, and I came all this way, and I'm not letting you go without a fight—"_

'_All this way' brought back memories of each planet they had visited, from Krett back to Remli Prime, from Teren to the Outer Rim supply outposts all the way back to Coruscant. 'Without a fight' gave them all the times Carth Onasi had been a hero, all the times he hadn't left people behind, all the times he had fought and won for the Republic, and all the secrets he now knew as an Admiral._

_She tried to wire his jaw shut. She tried to force his teeth together, keep his lips from moving, but she still wasn't very good at physical manipulation. All she succeeded in doing was making his upper lip shake like he was going to snarl at her—_

Visas broke the connection, bringing them back to the soft noise of the apprentices playing and the afternoon sun shining in the wards.

Celyn squinted, trying to find the images. She cracked one eyelid open. "I want to watch. Why did we stop?"

Visas stared back at Celyn's eager little face and calmly rested a palm on the child's shoulder.

"Celyn, I fear your mother will have to do something drastic to stop your father. She will have to hurt him."

Celyn thought about this quietly for a moment.

"She's good though," the little girl said, glancing up at the Miraluka. "She's just pretending to be bad. And if she has to hurt Father to make him stop talking, he'll…it'll be okay, because she's just pretending, right?"

There was no sufficient answer in Basic or any other language for Visas to give. She hesitated a moment, and then allowed the child to find the only person who might give her one.

_He was going to keep talking. He was going to keep talking and she could feel them now, gingerly poking at his memories, trying to claw through hers and paint accurate pictures of them: the Republic, the Jedi Order. Celyn. Dustil. Morgana._

_Carth took a cautionary step towards her, holding his hand out like she might take it and he could whisk her away from all this without so much as a single round of blaster fire._

"_Please, beautiful," he said, almost a whisper. "You're better than this. You're a Jedi, rememb—"_

_The 'b' dropped into a sickening grunt when the lightning hit his chest. Through this new, terrible power of the true Sith, she knew that every inch of him felt like it was splitting open and tearing. Stars flew by his eyes faster than a trip through hyperspace and twice as blinding. Carth bit down on his lip involuntarily and tasted his own searing hot blood. Though he didn't have the Force, she could hear his thought, finally not of Dustil or Morgana or Celyn or the Republic._

Beautiful…please—

"_You are a stubborn man, Admiral." The words came out of her mouth, though it was easier to say them if she pretended they were coming from one of the red-skinned creatures watching silently around her. It was hard to be audible over Carth's screaming. "But that will serve you well once you realize the truth."_

_She lowered her hand, and Carth fell back onto the glossy black floor, coughing and gasping for air, curling inward like there would be less pain if there was less of him._

Let me remove him from the complex, _she told Sila_. There are aspects of our past relationship that would be useful in convincing him, though not entirely appropriate within these walls.

_The laughter of the Sith echoed throughout her head and everyone else's. _If you think it best, Lord Revan.

_She suddenly missed being called Katrina._


	22. Chapter 21

"Still no answer?" Mira asked, re-entering the cockpit from her small circuit throughout Revan's ship.

The dead air still crackling over the comm link nearly half an hour after Sarii had called to warn Admiral Onasi and the others of the coming guards didn't bode well. They had frantically repeated the message over and over, but neither the Admiral nor his son—_or Mical, or Atton—_had replied. Her only consolation was that out of the dozen or so signatures that had been detected in the body heat scan, none had disappeared on their own. Instead, all of them had vanished from the small ship's sensors at the same instant, as though the Sith inside had just realized they had the ability to block them.

"Well, there's nothing else on this ship to help us," Mira added without waiting for an answer. "If we go in there, it's going to be just as blind as them."

"Maybe we should send T3 in," Sarii murmured, glancing sideways at the droid. "He could at least scout things out and maybe find them for us."

The droid beeped at Mira, who bent down and ran her hands over the droid's casing as if searching for something.

"He says Revan stuck a restraining bolt on him that kicks in whenever he tries to leave the ship." The bounty hunter's brow furrowed behind her red hair. "But I don't feel one on him. It must have been programmed into his main subroutines or something." She stood up straight again. "Looks like if it's going to be anyone, it'll have to be us."

The Jedi master and former Republic general in Sarii knew the odds were against them. If two former Sith, one Jedi Padawan, and an Admiral hadn't lasted longer than few minutes, chances were another Jedi Knight and a bounty hunter wouldn't last much more. And there was no way of knowing what had happened to them—if they had been imprisoned, tortured, turned, or were being _made _to turn. And if they were dead already, then there was no point in Sarii and Mira dying too.

But the part of Sarii that couldn't help smiling at Mical's honest interest in, well, _everything_, or Atton's sarcasm no matter how inappropriate it was for the situation knew that leaving them behind would never be an option, no matter how much of a surefire suicide it was to go after them. Or no matter how close it brought her to facing Revan.

She pulled her lightsaber from her belt. "I'm going to try and find another entrance into the complex. Maybe they'll be so tied up with the others than they won't notice one person sneaking in."

Mira rolled her eyes. "Right. When has that ever worked? If we're going to be stupid, let's at least be stupid together, huh?"

The Jedi Master and former Republic general parts of her were a little embarrassed at how glad Sarii was that she wouldn't be going in alone. She gave Mira a smile, nodding. The bounty hunter took up her assault rifle and powered down the ship's computers.

"Don't get into too much trouble, T3," she told the droid. "Hightail it out of here on autopilot if we don't come back, okay? Don't bother waiting around for HK—he's probably the one that killed us."

If a droid could laugh, T3 came close, beeping them a farewell and good luck.

Mira started down the gangplank first. She only made it about halfway before suddenly backing up flat against the side of the ship, crouching down behind the hydraulic lifts with her assault rifle raised close to her face. Sarii ignited her lightsaber, standing back so she was out of sight.

"There's someone coming," the bounty hunter reported in a whisper. She lifted the rifle's scope to her eye, lowered it for a moment, and then lifted it again. But she didn't fire.

"What the frack?" Sarii heard the bounty hunter mumur.

Sarii stepped a little down the gangplank, trying to see whatever Mira apparently didn't think was dangerous enough to fire at. She couldn't see anything at first, her view partially obstructed by the ship's hull. But she could hear two people arguing, unintelligible at first and then clearer and louder as they came closer to the ship.

"I am _not _leaving Dustil—"

"Dustil will be fine. There's very little in there he hasn't seen before."

"And the others? Or do you just not care about what happens to them?"

"It's _your _fault they're all stuck back there, _Admiral_. Do you make blindingly stupid decisions like this everyday?"

"You're really not in any position to start pushing my buttons, _Lord _Revan—"

_No…it can't be, she's…she's fallen, she's a Sith Lord, she's with them, she can't be here—_

"It's Admiral Onasi," Mira said, glancing up at Sarii. "And—"

And then they came storming past Sarii, up the gangplank and into the central room. Admiral Onasi, covered in sweat and singed around the edges of his half-unbuckled jacket, his face contorted and his eyes never moving off his wife.

Revan.

She was all in black robes and armor, her lightsaber dangling from her side like it was an extra arm she could pick up and use at any time rather than an inanimate object attached to a belt. Sarii saw no skin, nothing that made her alive, nothing that made her warm, nothing that made her human.

"That was a fracking _act_, Carth," Revan snapped, surprisingly clear through the layers of fabric and plastic that formed her mask and hood. "Do you really think we'd be standing here right now if it wasn't?"

"All I know is that it looks like I showed up just in time," Onasi replied darkly. "I came all this way to find you and—"

"I didn't ask you to come and find me!" Revan said, throwing her hands up in the air. She pointed an accusatory finger in his face. "If you brought Celyn out here too, I swear I'll—"

"You'll what? Kill me? Force, Katrina, _listen _to yourself—"

"_Where is she,_ Carth?"

"I didn't bring her out here. What the hell do you take me for?" the Admiral replied icily. "I left her in the Jedi Temple. She's safe there. I might not have had to leave her at all if you'd given me some indication that you were ever coming back again—"

"I couldn't! Don't you understand? They know everything now, all because of you…" Revan trailed off, putting a gloved hand up to her unexposed forehead and sighed exasperatedly. "You shouldn't be out here—"

"Neither should you. You didn't listen, so why should I?"

Sarii extinguished her lightsaber. Both the Admiral and Revan seemed to notice her and Mira at the same time.

"Sarii," she offered. Revan's mask, smooth and unscratched, stared back at her. What might be hidden beneath it was unfathomable.

"Sarii Zhen," she tried again. "Or General Zhen."

"Am I supposed to recognize you?"

The voice hadn't changed. It was still the same straight-forward mezzo-soprano that had haunted Sarii since jamming her lightsaber into the center of the Council.

"I…guess not," she finished weakly.

"She was under your command in the Mandalorian Wars," Onasi murmured. It was surreal; the way the pair had shifted from passionately yelling at each other to the Admiral calmly explaining the past to the former Dark Lord. "She's been helping me find you."

_No, I haven't. I never wanted her to be found-_

"Well, I didn't need to be found, so I guess that makes us even, General Zhen."

Sarii heard her name and rank like yesterday. She struggled to comprehend that Revan couldn't remember her, couldn't have known that the way she had intoned Sarii's name was just like the last time Sarii had been in front of her, being told to take her troops to a certain section of Malachor.

Mira stepped around Sarii, her assault rifle dangling from her hand. "Mira, Lord Revan. Pleased to meet you. Mind telling us where the rest of our crew is?"

"Your crew walked into a trap," Revan answered flatly. "The Sith knew you were here. They let you in. They know we're here right now. They know everything—"

"Great," Mira interrupted. "Do they know if Atton and Mical are dead?"

"Force-sensitives are their specialty. They've been taken to the detention cells for conversion. Converting non-Force sensitives requires interaction with the Sith so that appropriate material can first be perceived and then used," the former Dark Lord replied, her last few words pointed witheringly in the Admiral's direction.

_She sounds like she knows from first-hand experience—_

"I _do _know," Revan snapped, turning her masked face in Sarii's direction.

"What? How to get them out?" Admiral Onasi said. "Because I'm not going anywhere without Dustil, I can tell you that."

"We can't do anything right now. I'm supposed to be converting you. I can't go running back in there with a Jedi and a couple Republic soldiers—"

"I'm a bounty hunter, actually," Mira corrected.

"Whatever," Revan snapped. "Everyone just be quiet. I need to think."

Admiral Onasi watched his wife with a haunted, suspicious look in his eyes that was new to Sarii. "I've never known you to snap at people, Katrina—"

"That's not my name," the former Dark Lord interrupted sharply.

The Admiral was silent for a moment, as if her words had cut through more than just the air. "Not even when someone called you by the wrong name."

A cold, heavy silence filled the center of the ship. Admiral Onasi and Revan stared hard at each other.

"T3's got a lot of information about the trip out here that might be useful to the Republic," Mira finally said. "I'm going to roll him back to the _Hawk._ Can't hurt to have information in as many places as possible. We'll comm when we're finished so you can tell us our next move." She nudged Sarii with her foot."I think the Exile might want to join me."

Sarii had never been happier to have an excuse to leave. She quickly turned and fled after Mira.

* * *

_Don't believe everything you see down there, Father_.

Carth was having a hard time not believing what he saw. Especially when it was accompanied by what he heard.

His hearing in general wasn't that great at the moment; his ears had been ringing ever since the lightning, and his jawbone ached like there were still aftershocks rattling his bones. He'd watched Katrina and Bastila and Juhani and Jolee all grit their teeth under lightning bolts, and now he couldn't imagine how they'd done it.

Katrina—_Revan_—was still leaning over the cockpit control console, her back to him and her fingers tapping on the panel.

"Eight fracking years and you _still _don't trust me," she said, once Mira, Sarii, and T3 had exited the ship. "We might as well be back on Taris, flyboy—"

Flyboy. He couldn't even remember the last time she had called him that. Still, it did nothing to quell the wrenching in his gut. "I'm still having a hard time understanding what you're yelling at _me _for."

"Now they know you're here!" Katrina shouted, somewhat muffled under her mask. "They've probably known all along but didn't consider you a threat before—"

"Will you _please _take that thing off?" he snapped, unable to think of anything else, unable to remember that he was glad to see her while it was on.

She reached up to push her hood back, and he saw her brown hair, greasy and tied back. Her hands grasped either side of the mask, removing it from her face. Carth made no attempt to hide his disgust or the visible cringing his body went through.

Her face was a sickly looking grey, every vein and artery shining like they were permanent tattoos on her neck and cheeks. Her eyes were an ugly shade of mustard yellow, which clashed against the pale lavender color of her lips.

She struck a completely ridiculous looking pose considering her appearance; one hand on her hip and her head cocked to the side.

"What? Did you think I was going to come out here in full Jedi regalia with my lightsaber blazing, loudly announcing my intentions to wipe their evil presence from the face of the galaxy?"

"No," Carth replied defensively. "But not…this."

"They were expecting a Sith, Carth," Katrina finished witheringly. "The Sith I used to be. They were expecting Lord…me."

She watched him for a moment, still breathing heavily from the force of her tirade moments ago.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't be yelling at you-"

"No, arguing's good," he sighed, rubbing his neck. "If you're arguing with me, it means you still care what I think."

"Why wouldn't I care what you think?" she said, coming towards him. He involuntarily recoiled.

The hurt in her eyes was obvious even with their putrid yellow color. "It's only makeup," Katrina said softly.

"Those lightning bolts were real," Carth answered evenly.

Katrina folded her arms in front of her, eyes downcast. She suddenly looked much smaller, much less intimidating- like a chastised child dressed up in clothing that didn't quite fit.

"Are you all right?" she murmured gently, glancing up at him. "From the lightning, I mean."

"I had to do it," she continued without waiting for an answer. "You just kept talking, you were telling them everything…I couldn't think of any other way to make you be quiet."

_Gorgeous, beautiful, Katrina, Katrina Onasi, Celyn's mother, Dustil's master, I love her, I'm glad to see her, I am not this damn superficial-_

All of that sounded like background noise against what his eyes were telling him.

"They probably know anyways," Katrina added, sighing dejectedly. "I couldn't hide everything…I was too panicked trying to figure out how to get you out of there."

He had imagined this moment every single day since she left. She was usually smiling. Occasionally her hair was down. Every variation on the fantasy included pulling her into his arms and calling her gorgeous—

But she wasn't gorgeous. She was, to be honest, quite ugly at the moment. He rubbed his neck awkwardly as she grasped her earlobe, pulling on it and looking away.

"I'm sorry," Katrina pleaded.

_Tell her it's all right, tell her you love her, tell her everything you've wanted to tell her for almost two years—_

"I don't like leaving Dustil in there," he said instead, shaking his head. "He wouldn't tell me a lot about what happened on Chael, but he…he's been through enough—"

"He saw some of the worst of what they can do there. He can survive one night." Katrina gave him a faint smile. "The Sith need to sleep too."

Carth forced himself to nod. "Where's HK?"

"He's in the complex." She jutted her chin in the direction of the building. "I put a blank memory core in him every day and send him in there to gather information. He comes back when he's finished and shuts himself down."

It wasn't what he wanted to say, what he _should _say, but Carth's mouth still wasn't ready to form the words. "Half the crew of the _Ebon Hawk _is still with us. The bounty hunter and the Exile plus the droids."

Katrina nodded, dropping her hands to her sides where they fidgeted with her robes, unsure of what to do.

"We can't do anything until tomorrow," she replied, gazing up at him one last time. Finally she turned, moving towards the door to the crew quarters.

It came up over him in one sudden realization that she was walking away from him, that she was about to leave him. Again.

Carth grasped her arm as she tried to pass and pulled her to him without any kind of hesitation.

Knowing his former Sith son was trapped in a Sith compound; seeing his former Dark Lord wife disguised as a Sith told him his heart shouldn't be pounding, told him his skin shouldn't be tingling, told him he shouldn't be this overjoyed that she was finally in his arms after almost two years.

"It'll go away by morning," she murmured softly.

"What will, gorgeous?" he asked, imagining her hazel eyes in place of the yellow, her full pink lips in place of the cold lavender. Carth pictured the smooth coloring of her cheeks; the soft lines of her neck and shoulders. He plastered them over the bony contours of her veins and found that it wasn't that hard to finally lean in and kiss her.

It made his head swim to feel her back in his arms, to feel her hands in his hair, around his neck; to feel_ her_; alive and kissing him back. He fell back up against the door, pulling her with him. Someone—Carth couldn't tell if it was him or her—maneuvered them towards the small crew quarters.

_Beautiful—_

Her lips paused under his, and he opened his eyes to meet hers, yellow despite his mind's best efforts.

But there was nothing foreign about the way she was looking at him. "Still?"

He lifted his hand to brush her pale white cheek. "Always."

* * *

She was right— it all disappeared by morning. Carth had been unable to sleep, restless to get up and get moving and get Dustil and Katrina the hell out of here. He lay next to her now—in bed, next to his wife—and noticed that her skin was again a healthy shade of peach and he couldn't see any veins except the usual ones around her wrists.

Katrina's eyes fluttered open, not a hint of yellow or orange or brown or anything in between to be found in their irises. She lifted her hands, tracing over his bare neck and shoulders over and over again. They shook against his chin and danced across his forehead as she bit her lip. Carth watched her for a moment until she finally withdrew them to rest against the pillow.

"Sorry," she breathed, shaking her head. "I've been wishing you were here for so long."

"Well, I'm not going anywhere. And neither are you. I'll use my blaster next time if I have to."

Her fingers ran over his thigh where both blaster and holster would have normally been resting.

"I was half expecting you to use it this time," Katrina murmured, smiling. Her face was so close to his that he could feel her calm breathing warm on his chin.

"Wouldn't have done me much good to shoot you, beautiful, even if I was starting to scrape the bottom for ways to stop you."

"Like what?"

"Would you believe that for about ten seconds I actually considered impregnating you to keep you from going?" he joked.

Her laughter—he had forgotten how much he missed that. Her body shook with the force of it, and her lips curled back farther into her blushing cheeks.

"I hope they were an _opportune _ten seconds," she teased. "Another brilliant tactical decision by Admiral Carth Onasi."

"They could call it the Onasi maneuver," Carth replied, winking at her.

Katrina smirked, fingers walking up over his shoulder to massage his arm. She sat up in bed, rolling her neck and stretching her arms over her head.

It was impossible to think that this was the same woman who had jolted him breathless with lightning a few hours ago to save his life. But it was impossible _not_ to notice the new definition and tone in the muscles of her back; the thin, barely pronounced but still visible veins she exposed when she lifted her hair off the back of her neck.

"_You are a stubborn man, Admiral. But that will serve you well once you realize the truth."_

Katrina's head turned sharply and she stared at him. Carth looked away.

"I haven't fallen," she told him quietly. "I know it didn't look like that, I know it didn't _feel _like that, but…you'd be a Sith by now if I had."

He reached out and ran his hand across her spine, up to the veins on her neck hidden now beneath her hair. "You're dancing awfully close to the edge, gorgeous."

It was Katrina who looked away now. "I didn't mean to. I was stupid and cocky coming here by myself, just waltzing in there with some black robes and HK like that would fool them…They knew the second I landed here that I wasn't the Revan who had contacted them." She glanced over her shoulder at him. "I had to convince them I was. Just looking or acting like a Sith isn't enough for them. They can see past that. I had to think like one until they taught me how to hide it."

She looked away again, laughing softly. "I guess looking, acting, and thinking like something pretty much makes you that something, doesn't it?"

Carth sat up a little on his elbows. "Only if you can't see that that something is wrong."

"I always knew this was wrong." Her voice was quiet enough now that it almost seemed like she was talking to herself. "All of it. But I had to do it. I had to become Lord Revan, or they'd do it for me."

"Maybe they knew that."

Katrina sighed. "Maybe they did. Maybe I've been playing into their hands this whole time." She reached for her shirt, pulling it over her head and tying her hair back in only a few smooth movements. "But that ends today."

Carth sat up straight too, running a hand quickly through his hair and reaching for his jacket. "What's the plan? Where are they holding Dustil and the others?"

"They'll be in the west cell block. It spans about a mile, though. They don't want the prisoners talking to each other or hearing each other scream. Outside influence muddles direct influence," Katrina said, in a mocking hiss that Carth was pretty sure was an imitation of the creature that had spoken to him yesterday.

"Sarii's Padawan Mical Jorde and her pilot Atton Rand were taken too," he said. "Did they single me out because of you?"

Katrina shook her head. "They singled you out because you weren't Force sensitive. The pilot must be Force-sensitive too."

Atton Rand with the Force…Carth decided he didn't want to consider what applications the cocky, sarcastic, former Sith conversion artist would have for it. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, reaching for his pants and boots. "I should contact the _Hawk_ and tell them to start moving back over here—"

"No. I'm going in alone."

He turned to stare at her, one boot still in his hand. "What?"

"I'm going in alone," Katrina repeated, wrapping her belt around her waist. "I'm going to find Dustil and the others and release them. Then I'm going to kill Sila."

'Alone' was a word Carth had had quite enough of. He stood, his jacket still hanging open and one boot on his left foot.

"First of all, no one's going anywhere alone," he told her, gesturing with the hand that was still holding his other boot. "Second of all, who the hell is Sila, and what makes you think you can kill him by yourself?"

"Sila's one of them, the one that talked to you in the chamber. He leads their version of the Jedi Council. He's converted or helped to convert more sents than anyone else. He's been mentoring me." There was a loud click when she fastened her belt. "And I'm going to kill him."

"Oh, you are, huh?" He bent to put the other boot on, hopping a few times before it was all the way on. "You're going to expose yourself as a Jedi and go up against Sila, one of the most powerful true Sith, in the middle of their complex all on your own, without any help? Don't you think that's a little, I don't know, stupid and cocky?"

"It doesn't matter anymore."

His eyes narrowed, every sense suddenly aware and straining to classify the situation based on the ultimatum of that word: _anymore_.

Katrina extended her lightsaber and twirled the green blade around in front of her experimentally.

"You don't think you're going to survive this, do you?" Carth said in astonishment.

She glanced at him for a moment and then her attention was back on the lightsaber as she deactivated it and replaced it on her belt.

Carth slipped his blaster into its holster and approached her.

"You know I'm not going to let that happen—"

"What could you do, Carth?"

Her sudden lack of confidence, her slumped shoulders and soft voice that were nothing like the woman who had torn through Sith on the Star Forge and ripped through Rakatans in The One's enclave unnerved Carth and made him grasp her elbows, tilting his head in varying degrees to try and get her to look him in the eye.

"I…dammit, I could…" he trailed off into a sigh. "I'm not the best of men and I'm not the greatest fighter, but I'll find a way."

Katrina finally looked up.

"I don't want you in there," she said, her tone absolute and final. "I don't want anything to happen to you or Dustil because of me or this…thing I helped create—"

"Katrina," Carth interrupted. "I promised a little girl I'd bring you back."

"You shouldn't make promises you can't keep," she answered softly, brushing past him and through the doorway.

HK stood silent and deactivated near the gangplank, as still and copper and lethal-looking as ever. Katrina moved behind him, removing his memory core and crossing the room to exchange it with another from a footlocker full of them.

"On the _Hawk, _before the _Leviathan_…" Carth began, watching her rummage through parts, select one, and then walk back over to HK. "You promised you would let me protect you. Now you…you _have _to let me try—"

"No. You, Dustil, and the others can take HK and T3 and everything we've learned back to the Republic." She grunted as she tried to reinsert HK's memory core. "Then maybe they can mount some kind of preemptive strike before these Sith figure out a way to sneak in the back door to the Core Worlds."

"Don't you think it would be better and safer and _smarter _to let Sila die with the rest of them, then? Your experience is more valuable to the Jedi and the Republic than anything HK or T3 might have in their memory banks. There's no reason for you to try and take on Sila on your own—"

"I need to," Katrina interrupted sharply, looking at him around HK's head. "You don't know what he's done, Carth. You haven't watched him use people's loved ones against them, twist their memories to make the Sith look like heroes. You haven't _helped _him—"

Her mouth closed stubbornly, and she turned her attention back to HK. The droid's eyes lit up, and his head lifted, turning sharply in two directions before settling on Carth.

"Query: The Republic meatbag was not onboard when my primary memory core was last installed. Have we returned to Republic space, Master, or is this merely, as meatbags say, a bad dream?"

Carth narrowed his eyes at the droid. "Nice to see you too, HK."

With HK operational again, Katrina walked back to the cockpit, sitting down in the pilot's chair and tapping her fingers across the controls. "Say 'affirmative.'"

"Affirmative? Why? Listen, sister, I'm not—"

"Good," she interrupted, hitting a few more buttons and turning around in the chair. "The ship's got your voice activation now too. After I'm in and Dustil and the others are out, take HK and his memory cores. Then turn on the ship's self-destruct."

"I'm not going anywhere or doing anything without you," Carth replied sharply. "I came all the way out here to find you and bring you home, and I'm not going to let you sacrifice yourself just so you can kill one Sith out of a thousand. The Jedi and the Republic will help if you want to bring the fleet back out here. You don't need to do this alone—"

"You don't know what Sila can do, Carth," Katrina snapped, folding her arms in the chair. "If you or the others go in there, he and the rest of them can turn you in an instant. They'll show you things that didn't happen but could have, and twist everything around so it's not Malak and Karath and the Sith bombing Telos anymore, but me or the Jedi. I can't protect you anymore. The instant they see I'm not actively trying to convert you, nothing I say or do is going to be able to stop them."

"Maybe I don't know what they can do to me, but I have a pretty good idea of what they can do to you," Carth answered. "What they've already done to you."

The silence that fell over the room might have had an effect if HK hadn't charged his assault rifle. "Interjection: Master, if you intend to mount a solitary assault on the Sith complex, might I suggest that you cease debate and commence action?"

Carth eyed the droid warily as if his words might actually prompt Katrina to act on them. When he saw that she wasn't moving from the chair, he turned back to her.

"I would have tried to stop you if you'd followed Bastila and Malak on Rakata," he continued. "And I'm not going to let you do something equally stupid and dangerous now. Let me protect you, gorgeous. We'll protect each other—Sila can't get to us if we're there to remind each other what's real. Give me a chance to try, even if I…even if I get killed in the process."

Katrina didn't answer for a moment, looking away as if she was too stubborn to acknowledge how much sense he was making. At least, that was what Carth hoped.

"We can't _both _die," she finally said, a furrow creating crooked lines across her brow.

He shrugged. "I think I gave up dying in my sleep when I joined the Republic. Personally, I can't think of a better way to go."

Katrina nodded, unfolding her arms and placing them calmly on the armrests of her chair. She gestured with her head back towards the control panel. "Make the call then, Admiral."

Carth pulled the comm from his belt, lifting it to his face. "_Ebon Hawk_, this is Admiral Onasi. Mira, Sarii, you there?"

"Morning, Admiral," the bounty hunter answered. "Hope you slept better than we did."

"Not by much. Is the Exile with you?"

"I'm here." The Jedi's reply was so meek and high-pitched that it sounded squeaky over the comm. Katrina snorted.

"Get back over here, quick as you can," Carth told them. "We're going back in to get Dustil, Mical, and Atton."

"Got it," Mira replied. "Anything we should bring, or you think this pot-luck'll have enough to satisfy everyone?"

"This is a rescue-and-retreat operation only. We don't know how to fight these Sith, and the best thing we can do is to return to Republic space and tell someone who might be able to figure it out what we know." He glanced up at Katrina expectantly.

Revan, his wife, stared back. She finally exhaled, defeated.

"He's right," she said loudly so it would be heard over the comm. "We go in and get out. We don't engage the Sith, if we can help it."

"Sounds like a plan," Mira answered. "I'm all for getting the hell back to reality, and I don't think it's wise to try and fight blind."

There was a moment of crackling static on the _Hawk's _end of the line.

"But as long as we're in there," the bounty hunter finally continued, "Nothing says we can't at least make life a little more difficult for them, does it?"


	23. Chapter 22

Lord Revan wasn't used to taking a back seat.

Neither, for that matter, was Katrina. Even before the _Leviathan _and the loss of her authority to shame and memory, she hadn't liked doing things Bastila's way. There was always something she thought would be smarter, faster, _better_, sometimes just because it was her idea and not someone else's.

Even now, as cocky and stupid as she knew her idea was, she liked it better. It was hers. _This _was hers—the way she was going to atone for it all, the way she was going to end the nightmares and the memories and the self-hatred that stared back at her in the mirror. It was a way that didn't involve possible (maybe even probable) danger to Carth, Dustil, or anyone else they had brought with them.

It was a way Katrina had been prepared for, some days even praying for, ever since she had found out Katrina was not her name.

But there was no arguing with a Republic admiral who had already lost one wife because of her and wasn't about to lose another one. What was more, Katrina didn't _want _to argue with him. Not after two years of wishing for those errant strands of brown hair, the leathery scent of his orange jacket, the husky patience in his voice. She only had one wish left unfulfilled, and that was being able to see Celyn one more time before the end.

_Don't think about how maybe this isn't the end. Don't think about how once before you thought it was, only to wake up a scout named Katrina on the _Endar Spire—

The bounty hunter Mira had a good head on her shoulders. Katrina's were currently feeling the strain of the explosive charges she was going to set in the main council chambers, packed carefully in a shoulder bag. The plan was smart, if crude: they were basically going to make as messy an exit as possible, tossing grenades and planting charges at a few strategic spots she had identified, and anywhere else they had the opportunity. If it wasn't a particularly effective method of stopping the Sith, it would at least slow them down. It was hard to find and convert an entire construction and repair crew, and buying or constructing droids to do it took time and credits.

Out of the two redheads, she preferred the bounty hunter. The other—General Sarii Zhen—had whatever Lord Revan had done to her plastered all over her freckled face. At worst, it seemed like a wound that might never heal. At best, it seemed like the same betrayal the entire Jedi Order and the Republic had suffered. Whatever the memories that had to do with the exiled Jedi, Katrina hoped they at least came quietly when she got them back. From the looks the Exile kept giving her, however, that didn't seem likely.

She had led them on a trek around the complex to an access point HK (who was heading to the _Hawk _to guard the ships and T3) had discovered on one of his trips. She hadn't asked how—HK wasn't exactly an explorer, and he had come back covered in oil like another droid had spit on him—but the entrance he'd found was a small maintenance tunnel used by refuse droids to expel larger quantities of pulverized trash into the air. It was a tight fit, but the dark side had an unfortunate though convenient slimming effect.

"Glad I've been keeping up with my cardio," Mira whispered, crouching down in front of the tunnel and working to pry the cover open with a hydrospanner.

As soon as the bounty hunter finished, Katrina lifted her bag over her head, shoving it forward into the tunnel ahead of her and crawling inside. It was hot and dusty inside, and sneezing only made a new cloud of whatever the residue was settle in a fine film over her skin and clothing.

She stopped at the other end of the access tunnel, twisting in the tight quarters to try and get at the tools in her belt to pry open the other end. Someone's head bumped into the back of her legs, causing her to lose her balance and fall forward onto her elbows. The tool she'd just managed to free went flying.

"Calm the frack down back there," Katrina hissed over her shoulder. When Carth didn't reply and Mira didn't shoot back any witty answer, it was pretty clear who was behind her.

She covered her mouth and nose with one hand and pawed through the dust for the tool with the other. The closed cover in front of her suddenly opened and Katrina found herself face to face with the lone white eye of a refuse droid.

The droid cocked its head at her. Then it began beeping wildly, backing up away from the tunnel and speeding off in another direction.

_Great. This is starting off well._

Katrina struggled to shimmy out of the tunnel, managing to work the upper half of her body out just in time to fry the droid with the Force. The momentum of the droid's spinning wheels sent it flying into a nearby wall. It bounced off and fell over, sparking a little but definitely offline.

She wriggled the rest of the way out of the tunnel onto the floor. Sarii crept out after her, standing up quickly and brushing dust off her clothes. The dust flew down and pretty much straight into Katrina's face, and she coughed, waving a hand in the hair and batting the Exile away.

Mira followed, grasping the top of the tunnel and pulling herself out. Carth was last, army-crawling his way out and shaking the dust from his hair after he was finished.

"All right," Katrina breathed, pushing herself up from the floor. "Carth and I will go find Dustil and the others. You two set the rest of the charges."

"And after we're finished?" the bounty hunter asked.

"I'll be surprised if you manage to finish without someone interrupting you."

General Sarii Zhen ignited her lightsaber. It gleamed calm and violet between them. "You haven't seen what we're capable of." The words fairly dripped with implications.

Katrina cocked an eyebrow at the Jedi. "Think you're capable of getting out of my way?" She stepped past her without waiting for an answer, heading down the hallway

"Sorry, gorgeous," Carth said in a low voice, falling in step beside her. "She's…the Exile's got a chip on her shoulder. It's probably hard not to when you're known as the Exile."

"I'm the Dark Lord Revan and I'm still polite," Katrina muttered, glancing back over her shoulder at the Jedi and the bounty hunter, who were already rounding a corner in the opposite direction.

Carth's pace slowed to try and search for a way to see through the windowless door of a cell. "You have any idea which one of these is Dustil's?"

The block of holding cells stretched on for almost a mile, but the Force instantaneously identified cells that were empty and cells that weren't. Only the fact that Katrina knew (or thought she knew) exactly what hellish mental images to search for told her who was Dustil and who was not.

Though it was hard to distinguish between Carth himself walking next to her and thoughts of Carth floating through the Force, the latter eventually grew stronger and stronger until he was all Katrina could think about too. She held her arm out to stop Carth in front of a cell.

He looked from the glossy black rock to her and back again. "What is it? Is Dustil in here?" Without waiting for an answer, he started running a hand along the door's seams, searching for some way to get it open.

Katrina grasped his hand. "It's not real, Carth." She gave his furrowed brow a smile. "I'll go in first. I'll open it from the inside."

Carth cocked an eyebrow at the wall of rock he saw blocking their path to Dustil, but stepped aside, watching her intently.

What they saw, like everything else here, was an illusion. A trick. Katrina stepped forward and into the cell's open doorway. Carth's sudden gasp sounded echoey for a moment in the narrow in-between past the impassable rock door he saw and the wide open cell she knew was there.

Despite there being no real door on the cells, that didn't make them any better lit. Katrina could barely make out the outline of a figure sitting on the floor in the corner, the upper half of his body hidden in the shadow but his legs and hands (planted flat on the floor) visible in the dim light.

"Dustil?"

For a moment, there was no answer. Then someone laughed; low and slow and sick.

"Another vision," a sneering version of Dustil's voice said. "Don't think I can't see through this deception. Of course the vision knows my name. It probes my thoughts. But I am learning the tricks, I am. Soon I will block them out entirely."

"I'm not a vision, Dustil," Katrina said, slowly and calmly lifting one hand to rest on her lightsaber.

"'I am not a vision' says the vision." The voice laughed again. "Well then, I am not Dustil Onasi, son of Carth, no. I am not a Jedi either."

"Carth's here, Dustil," she told him, trying to keep her voice gentle. "He's right outside. This is real. We're not visions."

"The vision speaks of my father." He was rocking back and forth in the corner now, exposing his trembling chin and the bottom of his nose with each movement forward. "The vision speaks of my father, not knowing I killed him twenty two times, and he has killed me, but I did not die." His head shook back and forth. "He won't be coming back for me, not again. With his tricks. His _tricks_!"

The figure suddenly jerked to the side, smacking his palm hard against the black rock floor. A choked sob escaped from his throat. "Oh, Father…why did you leave?"

Katrina stepped sideways, reaching out for Carth's arm and pulling him through the imaginary door inside with her. He stumbled a little, glancing back behind him at where the door he had seen used to be.

It lost his attention immediately when he saw the figure in the corner. "Dustil? Are you all right?" He started to move towards his son, but Katrina grasped his arm.

"Yes, questions," Dustil ranted quietly, almost to himself. "Visions always have questions for Dustil…before the killing starts. I won't answer." He whirled on them, exposing his sweat-lined brow and wild eyes in the dim light. "I won't answer!" he shouted.

Except for Dustil's ragged breathing, the cell was silent. Carth was silent. His jaw twitched once, blasters dangling at his sides. Katrina watched him swallow the lump in his throat, and forced herself to meet his gaze when he turned to look at her.

_Don't think about how, back when he was your Padawan, Dustil thought he was the greatest thing since orange-flavored juma juice when he managed to parry your favorite attack, and how he couldn't stop himself from grinning the entire day, even when you got angry and told him no one would blame you if you decided to Force push him out an airlock and he only grinned more, ran around telling Carth and anyone he could find that cared and even some who didn't how he had finally bested his master, and how you let him because you were proud of him and secretly so damn glad that he finally liked you—_

Katrina turned abruptly back towards her former Padawan. "Dustil…" She struggled to think of what to say, how to begin. What might be the magic combination of words or events that would bring him back to reality—

"Dustil, I need you to listen to me."

The Jedi didn't respond.

"_Dustil_," Katrina repeated more insistently.

"Told you."

Dustil's voice was low and mocking. Katrina unhooked her lightsaber from her belt, fingers tensed to ignite it if he was far gone enough to attack them.

"Told me what?" she said slowly.

"Told you someday you'd be the one in bantha fodder up to your eyeballs, and I'd have to come dig _you _out." The voice was casual, everyday. A little cocky and sarcastic. It was Dustil.

Katrina smiled, relieved. She offered a hand to Dustil, and he took it, letting her pull him up.

Carth exhaled brokenly. "What— Dustil, are you— are you okay?" His son's voice might have been back to normal, but his was a little strangled.

Dustil smirked, stepping forward and putting a hand on his father's shoulder. "Don't believe everything you see, right?"

Carth threw his arms around his son, gripping him tightly by his shirt. He released him again after a moment, taking an awkward step back and running a hand through his hair. "Right."

"That was a hell of an acting job," Katrina told Dustil, watching as he straightened his clothing and checked to make sure his lightsaber was still there.

The Jedi shrugged. "The Sith give you lemons, you make lemonade. Still, I wasn't really sure you were real until Father came in with you. Making me imagine I'm being rescued from all this isn't exactly their style."

"Do you know what happened to Mical and Atton?" Carth asked. "They dragged you three off because you're all Force-sensitive."

Dustil didn't look surprised. "Rand shouldn't be too hard to find. He'll be the only one chanting Pazaak card numbers."

They exited back out of the cell, Carth closing his eyes before he followed them through the doorway.

"I don't think I'm ever going to get used to this mind over matter stuff," he said, blinking back at the now open cell.

"It's actually safer for non Force-sensitives," Dustil murmured, igniting his lightsaber. "We're part of the Force. Even if we know techniques for blocking people out, they can _see _how we're doing it. They have to really work to get into your head, and make you see or believe something that isn't there."

Carth glanced sideways at Katrina like she could confirm Dustil's assessment.

_Don't think about how good that first victory against the Mandalorians felt, how it killed whatever unconscious threads of doubt that had been struggling to awaken in your rapidly hardening heart, how the first person you truly celebrated with was Malak after all the officers and members of the Republic had gone off to follow your new orders, and how Malak dipped his head slightly in deference to you and you grabbed his shoulders, shaking him and gripping his arms and even kissing his cheek in your excitement, and how you must not have noticed the instant blush that crept into his cheeks because you were too proud of yourself, too excited that you were right and now everyone, even those fools on the Council would know it—_

_Don't think about the fact that you didn't have to work that hard to turn yourself and your friend into Sith._

"It varies," she said instead.

It didn't take long for them to find the Exile's pilot. An almost reverent drone of digits and operators led them to his cell like a trail of breadcrumbs.

When they entered the cell, Atton Rand was laying with his upper body flat on the floor and his legs crossed up against the far wall. His hands were folded behind his head and there was a slight crinkle between his eyes, like maintaining the count required intense concentration. Katrina walked forward until she was standing over him.

Rand's brow furrowed under her shadow. His eyes opened, first narrowing in half-irritation and then widening in surprise. He rolled over, awkwardly dropping his legs from the wall and pushing himself up from the floor.

"Uh…you're her, aren't you?" He glanced quickly over her shoulder at Carth and Dustil and then back at Katrina again. "Revan. Lord Revan, I mean."

Katrina nodded. "That's me."

"Wow, I…uh…" The pilot ran both hands through his hair, straightening his collar and laughing nervously. "I mean, we've been trying to find you, right? So I guess I shouldn't be that surprised that we _did_…still, I never thought I'd—" He cleared his throat.

"It's…it's sort of an honor, ma'm," he added quickly. If she wasn't pretty sure it was just the reflection of Dustil's red blade off the glossy black stone, Katrina might have swore he was blushing.

Behind her, Dustil scoffed. "Wow, Rand. Way to almost piss yourself."

Rand glared past Katrina at him. "You think I give a gizka's ass what you think? Where's Sarii and Mira? Is Mical with them?"

"They're setting charges throughout the complex," Carth answered. "As soon as we find Mical and set a few ourselves, we'll comm them and get the hell out of here."

"You wouldn't happen to know where or how to find General Zhen's Padawan, would you?" Katrina added.

Rand blinked at her for a moment as though he didn't know who General Zhen was. "No idea. Mical's a squeaky clean Republic intelligence officer and as blue a Jedi as they come. Doesn't give them much to work with at first, you know?"

Katrina didn't like the knowing look in his eyes. "We'll just keep our ears open, I guess."

"I think I'll catch up with the others," Rand said, removing his blasters from his belt. "That'll make three on either end. Balance and all that crap."

Carth cocked an eyebrow at the pilot. "You're not worried about being captured again?"

"Hey, if the three of you are running around and no one's saying anything, what makes you think I'm going to be the guy to set them off?" Rand answered, gesturing at them with one of his blasters.

"Besides," he added, smirking over his shoulder at them as he exited the cell. "I'm pretty good at getting into places people don't want me to be."

* * *

Everything was going smoothly. _Too _smoothly, in Sarii's opinion. The fact that no guards or droids interrupted them as they creeped along hallways and set charges was a bad sign she was trying not to think about.

"Almost done—" Mira had a tool in her mouth that muffled her words. She finished setting the next-to-last charge they had brought, and stayed crouched down for a moment to admire her work.

The bounty hunter reached up and removed the tool, tucking it back into her belt and retrieving her assault rifle from the floor. "We'll set the last one and then throw the grenades as we run, I guess."

_If we have the chance to run_.

Mira frowned over her shoulder like she could tell what Sarii was thinking. "Yeah, I don't like this either."

"Then why are we doing it?" Sarii mumbled.

The bounty hunter shrugged. "Maybe we're being paranoid. Maybe they're all really asleep or something. Maybe pride and arrogance and all those supposed failings that turn people into Sith is making them dismiss us as a non-threat. I don't really know, and honestly, if no one's shooting at me, I don't really care."

_Easy for her to say_. Mira wasn't the one who had given the order at Malachor V. Mira wasn't the one who had been exiled from the Jedi for someone else's mistakes.

_Mira has moved on from her past, Exile. _The voice in her head was not Kavar's. It sounded like an old woman—or would have, if Sarii didn't already know how much more a secretive old woman might be beneath her brown hooded cloak.

_Mine follows me, Kreia, _Sarii replied bitterly. _I'm a wound in the Force that can't be healed. You used me for your own ends, just like Revan._

The old woman's laughter was bitter too. _I thought once you might follow in Revan's footsteps, but you refused…it seems all paths will take us to the end, whatever it may be, and no matter how strongly we fight against it._

Was that what this was? The end?

"_It is done—" The Sith Lord staggered, leaning up against one of the pillars. "At last, it is done."_

_It was more an automatic physical reaction than an emotional response when Sarii extinguished her lightsaber, moving to catch the old woman as she slid down the ancient stone of Trayus Academy._

"_You have defeated Malachor." Kreia coughed weakly in her arms. The old woman felt frail, impossibly light, like whatever weight she had possessed before had left her along with the power of the Force. "This place no longer holds meaning."_

_There is no dishonor in a choice made without regret, _the old woman told her in the now, her voice cutting through the eerie silence in the Sith complex_. Remember that, in the battle to come._

As if Kreia had willed it from the Force, sudden blaster fire began hitting the wall opposite them. Sarii and Mira hit the wall, brandishing their weapons and waiting for the enemy to round the corner.

Instead, Atton Rand came scrambling into view, almost slipping on the smooth obsidian floor and firing over his shoulder. He moved up against the opposite wall, firing back at the droids and human guards hot on his heels.

"Thanks, Rand," Mira shouted over the din. "This was just what we needed!"

"You know me—" Atton lifted his arms to fire but quickly ducked instead, sliding a little down the wall. "I like to make an entrance." He gestured with his chin towards Sarii. "How's it going?" he yelled.

Sarii wasn't sure if her face looked perplexed or amused. "Where's Mical?"

"Beats me," the pilot shouted back. "The Onasi family's looking for him."

Mira stood over Sarii to fire her wrist-launcher and quickly dropped down again. "We had one more charge left, but I'm thinking the hell with it!"

"Sounds like a…" Atton dove across the hallway to where Mira and Sarii were crouched. The frag grenade that had been tossed at his previous position exploded, sending chunks of black rock sliding across the floor.

"Sounds like a plan," he finished, a little too loudly next to Sarii's ear.

"We can't leave without Mical," Sarii replied, daring to step out into the line of fire so she could maneuver her lightsaber more easily. The action only caused the Sith to do the same, and they were forced to fall back to where their hallway intersected with another.

If the true Sith had been sleeping, they couldn't still be sleeping now. But there was no sign of anything with a lightsaber, and no time or energy to spare from deflecting shots to try and sense them through the Force.

"You remember the way out? Cause I sure as hell don't," Mira grumbled, struggling to free the commlink from her belt with one hand.

"Admiral?" she said over the link, ducking down behind Sarii. "Admiral Onasi, do you read?"

"This is Carth." Things sounded relatively quiet on the Admiral's end. "What do you need?"

"We need to get out of here," Mira replied flatly, standing and bending around the corner to fire her wrist-laucher and then ducking back down quickly again. "Barring that, we could use a little help!"

"Just hang on," Admiral Onasi told them. "We'll find you—"

The rest of his reply was cut off as the comm went rolling across the floor and Mira hissed in pain, cradling her hand to her chest. Sarii immediately bent to help her, grasping the bounty hunter's hand and carefully twisting it so she could see the damage.

"It glowed, like the comm fried or something—" Mira winced again, gesturing with her chin at where the comm had rolled against the wall. It was smoking, charred and useless.

_It glowed…_Overheated electronics didn't glow. Lightning did—

Blaster fire hit the wall just above Sarii's head, now coming faster and more furious than ever. She ignited her double blade again, stepping a little away from Mira to try and deflect more of the blasts back at the guards. It seemed like she was the only one fending them off—

And it seemed that way because she was. Atton was crouched against the wall opposite Mira, one blaster pistol lifted near his face but the other one dangling uselessly between his knees. He was staring down the hallway with a furrow in his brow.

She tried to keep her attention on the guards firing at her and not the empty hallway that was apparently more interesting. "Atton, what are you doing?"

He glanced up at her, and then at Mira. "I'll be right back." He turned in the direction of the hallway, and then turned back, as if he was reconsidering. "You have that last charge you were going to set?" he asked Mira.

The bounty hunter's face was screwed up somewhere between incredulity and pain. "It's in the bag." She worked her foot under the strap and yanked the bag towards her, removing the charge and sliding it across the floor to Atton with her uninjured hand.

"All right. I'll be back," Atton repeated. "I'll go set the last charge." The way he said it, it almost sounded like an afterthought.

"What? Atton, we need you here—"

But as soon as Sarii had a chance to look at the pilot, he had already disappeared.

* * *

"Mira?" Carth's voice echoed in the empty cell block. "Mira, do you copy?"

The commlink only crackled dead air back at them. Katrina met Carth's gaze.

"We'll take a shortcut through the Council chambers," she told him. "We'll drop our charges on the way."

Carth and Dustil exchanged glances like they knew as well as she did that two Jedi and a Republic admiral trying to take a shortcut through the Sith Council chambers was about as smart a move as three Sith trying to take a shortcut through the Jedi Council chambers.

But Katrina knew there was no other option.

She led them through the complex and towards the main hall, as ideal a place to blow things up as any. The room was empty when they entered, and Carth and Dustil immediately began to ground the charges around one of the large pillars supporting the room's ceiling.

"You know, maybe I don't know much about these Sith, but even if they do think they can turn anyone, it doesn't seem that smart to me to leave your stronghold unguarded and allow anyone to dock their ship and walk on in," Carth murmured. "I guess you've got to figure that if you're located in the farthest reaches of space and the entire sector is either terrified of you or doesn't know you exist, you probably won't have a lot of security breaches."

"They obviously haven't learned a lot from a couple thousand years of existing," Dustil answered, though he kept glancing over his shoulder and over at Katrina.

The complex was still eerily silent. If there was a firefight going on where Mira and Sarii were, it either wasn't very loud or the Sith were blocking them from hearing it.

Unless the distress call, like everything else, was just a trick. Katrina stood guard near the doorway with her lightsaber ignited, holding her breath.

"Got it," Carth exhaled. "Let's go."

He and Dustil rose, turning around to face her. They froze.

Sila was in her head before he was in the room. _Carth and Dustil give us little credit._

There was a disgusting intimacy in the way he said "us," the way his voice, a raspy hiss even in her head, slithered around their names. Katrina didn't turn around. Instead, she watched the reactions on Carth and Dustil's faces. Dustil ignited his red blade, lifting his eyebrows at the Sith behind her as if daring Sila to make a move. Carth lifted his blasters, not knowing they were useless.

_This is where it must end, I'm afraid. _Sila had come through the doorway now, and was slowly approaching her. _We have learned much together, you and I. For my part, I taught you to look beyond physical boundaries, to realize perception plays more of a role in determining truth than reality. And you have taught me—_

He laughed; the true Sith so seldom laughed that it sounded more like he was wheezing, hacking, expelling some disease. "I suppose I should speak aloud for the Admiral's benefit."

"I'm good, thanks," Carth shot back.

She knew Sila had two single sabers clenched between his long, bony, quadruple-jointed fingers. Their hum grew quieter, as if he was walking farther away from her rather than closer.

Katrina lifted her blade, tensing her body in preparation to attack.

"Go, get out of here," she told Carth and Dustil. "Both of you."

"Not a chance," Carth answered without missing a beat. Despite everything, one side of his mouth lifted. "I've never abandoned anyone on a mission, and I'm not about to start now."

"_Besides," he added, running a hand through his brown hair. "I'm going to need your help."_

_Maybe it was inappropriate for Katrina as one of only two known survivors from the _Endar Spire _now hiding in an abandoned apartment in the Upper City of Taris to want to thank him again anyway. If only to see his mouth form that rakish smirk again._

Katrina smiled at him. Then she tightened her grip on the hilt of her saber and whirled on Sila.

Only to find that he wasn't there. She stumbled with the force of her movement, which had been made fully expecting to meet a blade pressing down with equal pressure behind her. The Force had _told _her he was there.

Only Sila wasn't. He was hurtling towards Dustil from the opposite side of the room.

* * *

He didn't know why he was surprised. Atton Rand had turned, helped to turn, or at least watched others turn scores of Jedi. And, for a while, it had been sweeter and more satisfying than the biggest Pazaak win or a glittering, bare-lekkued Twi'lek calling your name—making them fall, making them see his side of it. Watching your enemy suddenly become your ally.

Still, it was a pretty fracking strange sight to see ice blue lightning lancing out of Mical Jorde's fingertips and into Mira's hand.

There was no telling what kind of state the kid was in (although Atton had a pretty good idea), especially if he was frying his former crewmates. Better Mira not find out who had shocked her. She and her wrist launcher probably wouldn't be too forgiving. Better a Jedi Master not see what had happened to her Padawan. She might do something stupid, like try to redeem him.

He would be the judge of whether or not that was possible. He dropped the charge Mira had tossed at him carelessly on the floor. It clanked almost deliberately loudly on the polished rock, but Mical didn't turn around from where he stood at the opposite end of the chamber, his back to Atton.

"Hey, Mical," Atton called, keeping his distance. "How's my favorite Jedi Padawan?"

_Walk slow, stay casual. You're all friends here. Friends are only looking out for you. Friends are only doing this for your own good—_

"We could've really used you in that fight," he continued when the Jedi didn't reply. "Course, maybe the kind of help you're giving out these days we're better off without."

"You really believe you understand the Jedi, don't you?" The snide sneer that Atton had always known Mical's vocal cords were capable of had now taken over the Jedi's speech. "You really think sentients _converted _just because you inflicted physical pain?" He finally turned around.

The physical changes were subtle when conversion happened. Not that yellow-eyed, veiny pale skin crap they stuck in all the vids. That didn't happen until much, much later, when the power of the dark side had had the chance to really suck a sent dry. Instead, Mical's blue eyes were more intense. Brighter, like they were iced over. His posture and his movements—usually much more subdued, deliberate, as if the kid considered them like he considered everything else—were now calculated, apparent.

Atton knew. He'd watched the kid with a conversionist's eye—always looking for weaknesses, things to exploit. Buttons to push.

"Your supposed successes were all failures, Atton," Mical told him, smug. "Giving you the answers you want in exchange for relief from torture is simply and exactly that: an exchange. A trade, and nothing more, made for something a sentient wants. They remain focused on the self, on their own wishes, their own desires."

_Agree with them, at first. You're their friend. You _want _to believe them, you want to help them out. They can trust you, you won't hurt them—unless you have to._

"Instead of the greater good, right? Isn't that what you Jedi are all about?"

"The greater good, yes," Mical nodded. "But also the _greater_, whatever that may be. Enlightenment, self-improvement…a Jedi seeks to develop himself through knowledge and training."

_Then, turn it around. Take what they believe, what they think they know, and flip it. Use it against them. People never like to hear the truth about themselves._

"A Jedi also uses their powers to defend and protect, never to attack others, right?" Atton scoffed. "I guess your code's getting more and more selective as the years go by, huh?"

For a moment, the kid looked like his old self. One side of his mouth lifted along with one of his eyebrows, forming that brainy, amused face he liked to make at Atton and Atton liked to think about punching.

Then he swept his arm out, sending a more of a wall than a wave of the Force at Atton. It lifted him up off his feet and slammed him hard into the back wall. He could hear the rock behind him crack, and felt the pieces under him and around him when he collapsed onto the floor.

_Damn._ Had Mical always been this powerful? Atton hadn't gotten a chance to observe; the kid was quiet, always taking up the rear, providing support and protection to his master, never in the lead, never showing off, never showing at _all_, apparently, what he could do—

"Is this how it works, Atton?" Mical was standing over him now. "First I hurt you, to show you I'm the one in control, and then you turn. Simple as that?"

"Yeah—" Atton grunted, holding his ribs and trying to push himself up to a sitting position. "You've pretty much got the gist of it."

_Humor them if you have to, anything to get them to let their guard down, for that brief instant—_

The Force now slammed into his shoulders, pressing him up against the wall. Mical's hand followed, curling around Atton's neck and following it rather than pushing it up the wall until they were face to face.

"Is this how it might have worked had you gotten your hands on Master Zhen during the war? Did you put every Jedi you captured through this petty, needlessly painful exercise in futility?"

Master Zhen. Sarii.

_Distract them. Turn their attention where you want it to go, and away from where you don't. Sents'll focus on anything if you give them a reason to._

Even though the kid's hand was tight against his windpipe, Atton forced a laugh.

"Yeah, I hurt a lot of Jedi. Had to, to turn 'em. You got a problem with that, or just the way that I did it? Because from where I'm dangling, I can't really tell."

"Perhaps we should find out." Mical's voice was flat, a soulless echo.

Atton clawed at the kid's fist around his neck with his gloved hands. "Find out what?"

"If you had to. Your method's necessity. Its effectiveness." The snap-hiss of Mical's lightsaber illuminated the Jedi's face in flickering shades of blue. "They tried to share their knowledge with you too, you know. But you refused to listen. You blocked them out."

"Can't turn somebody who's already there, kid."

"Anyone can be turned, Atton," Mical replied, deathly serious. "I would have thought you, of all people, would know that."

"Master Zhen would agree," he added. "Or she will, once she learns what I've learned."

Master Zhen. Sarii.

The Sith's angle was easy to see now. They'd found out what he wanted: information, research, a fracking evaluation. A brainiac pissing contest. Mical was partially right: it was an exchange. A trade. One thing for another. Or one thing to stop another from happening.

_So you've got his attention. He's focused on you._

_Let's keep it that way._

Atton laughed, low and quiet. "All right, kid. Turn me. I dare you."


	24. Chapter 23

"What the fracking hell?" Mira sounded frustrated, to say the least.

"Rand, get your ass back here!" the bounty hunter shouted down the hallway, leaning forward on one hand like that would make it easier for Atton to hear her.

_He is a fool and an imbecile, and you would do well to keep your eye on him. _Until now, Sarii had always thought Kreia was just an irritable old woman. Maybe she had a point.

"What now?" she yelled over the crackle of her lightsaber as she continued to deflect shots. A double blade like hers was more efficient, but the guards weren't stupid. They were crouched behind and under walls, corners, and pillars, and they didn't expose themselves for nothing—they let the droids fire from the open.

"We run is what now," Mira answered, using one hand to push herself up from the floor.

"What about Mical—" Sarii slammed up against the opposite side of the wall from Mira, where Atton had been before he'd gone running. "And we don't know where Atton is…we can't just leave them—"

"Atton ran off like an idiot, and Mical's going to have to find his own way out." Mira watched the blaster fire as if trying to time it. "We're not going to be any good to them dead!"

After one or two false starts, the bounty hunter sprinted across the open hallway, keeping low to the ground to avoid fire. Sarii followed, deflecting shots as she ran.

_Mical…Padawan, where are you? _For a moment, she thought she had found him. Her pace slowed, trying to pull that sudden familiarity closer to her.

But it snapped free suddenly, and there was no trace of Mical in the Force except her desire for one.

"Do we even know where we're running?" she asked Mira between breaths.

"Away!" the bounty hunter replied, looking over her shoulder and then quickening her pace. Behind them, four floating sentinel droids and two rolling assault droids were hot on their tails, followed by the slower but no less dangerous human guards who had survived the firefight.

Mira turned on her heel and ran backwards for a moment to fire her wrist launcher. The blast created a momentary fireball of flames and smoke, but the sentinel droids flew cleanly through it, undamaged.

"Now would be a good time to start throwing grenades!" she told Sarii, yanking two out of her pack and hurling them back over her shoulder without looking. Sarii pulled out one of her own and let it drop and roll as she ran. The subsequent explosions rained chunks of black rock at their heels, but not enough to impede their pursuers.

"It isn't working!" Sarii shouted.

"I know!" the bounty hunter snapped back, skidding to a halt in front of a dead end. The wall of black rock in front of them was several stories high, and there was no hallway close enough to them and far enough away from the approaching guards to backtrack down instead.

"Well, General, I'm fresh out of tactical maneuvers," Mira breathed, trying to reload her wrist launcher awkwardly with the same hand it was strapped to.

_The technicians had run the necessary scenarios and simulations. It was calculated that only a few single-engine fighters would be lost with the detonation of the mass shadow generator. The loss was worth the gain: the defeat of the Mandalorians. The survival of the Jedi and the Republic._

_The thought comforted Sarii as she sat outside the Council chambers, waiting to hear her fate for giving the order handed down from the now Dark Lord Revan._

They were cornered and soon to be surrounded, without a comm and without a lot of options.

"Blow the charges," Sarii said.

The bounty hunter looked up at her, eyes narrowed. "We placed them at strategic structural spots. This place might come down _on _us instead of just around."

"We don't have a choice. Blow the charges."

Mira glanced at Sarii, then down the hallway, where the sound of blaster fire was growing louder and louder, and back to Sarii again. With one finger from her burned hand, she flicked open a panel on her wrist launcher.

"If I die, the first thing I'm going to say to Bao-Dur is that you told me to do it."

* * *

Carth barely had time to react when Sila came barreling towards Dustil, twin red blades held behind him in each hand like to hold them out in front of him would provide too much wind resistance and slow him down. His son was looking in the opposite direction, totally unaware of what was heading his way.

He reached out and shoved Dustil back out of the way, firing twice at the Sith. His shots deflected harmlessly off Sila's lightsabers, and didn't slow him down at all. There was nothing between those two glowing red blades and Carth's lightsaber-less self.

He instinctively dove out of the Sith Lord's path, sliding across the floor into Dustil, who scrambled to get up.

"Where is he?" his son breathed, turning around in a complete circle.

Carth hurriedly pushed himself up. "What do you mean 'where is he'? He's right there, right—"

"Watch out!" he yelled to Katrina. Sila had both sabers lifted over his head, and they came crashing down onto her single green one. The doubled strength of the blow made Katrina stumble backwards.

Dustil was there in an instant, coming at the Sith Lord from the side. Sila transferred both lightsabers to the hand fighting off Katrina and sent a Force wave barreling into Dustil, which Carth's son narrowly avoided by turning with the oncoming wave rather than standing flat against it.

The multiple joints of Sila's long fingers curled around each hilt, forming an angle with the blades. The combined outline of his lightsabers looked almost blurry, a red haze rather than an intense glow. But instead of attacking Katrina again, he took a large, smooth step away from her. To Carth's surprise, Katrina swung as if he was there. Her green blade hummed steadily as it cut through nothing but air.

A few meters away, Dustil was slowly and steadily advancing on not Sila, but Katrina. He stopped suddenly, blinking. One hand lifted to wipe his face.

Sila stood silent and still between the two, directly in their line of sight. He was motionless except for the sudden jerks of his saber to deflect Carth's blaster fire.

"What are you waiting for? Take him down!" Carth yelled. Neither Jedi responded. Katrina's eyes were wild, searching the room and at one point even staring straight at Sila and then moving on.

_It's like they can't see him, or they're seeing him somewhere else—_

"Do you see him, Dustil?" Katrina asked.

His son shook his head. "No."

Sila had been taking slow, leisurely steps around both of them. Now he approached Katrina, turning his wrists outward to form a 'v' of red light in front of him.

"Behind you!" Carth shouted. On his warning, Katrina turned, slamming her blade down and cutting Sila's 'v' in two. She struck the Sith Lord again and again in rapid sucession, like she was afraid of losing his position if she slowed down.

"Keep going, you're on him," Carth called out, firing again. This time, one of his blasts hit the Sith Lord squarely on one shoulder.

Either the shot or the words or both had the unfortunate effect of getting Sila's attention. The Sith Lord growled, jutting his chin in Carth's direction. The Force knocked his blasters so hard out of his hands that his knuckles cracked. The weapons went skidding to opposite sides of the room.

_This would be a nice time to be Force-sensitive, _Carth thought grimly to himself, hurrying to retrieve the blaster closest to him—

But he wasn't Force sensitive. Being sensitive to anything automatically meant that you were more aware of it, more receptive to whatever it was. More susceptible to its dangers. More likely to see Sila where he wasn't. He wasn't Force sensitive, but Katrina and Dustil were.

He quickly grabbed his weapon and turned around, scanning the room for the Sith Lord. He had neatly slipped to the side, away from the corner Katrina had been pushing him into and was now taunting Dustil by allowing their lightsabers to barely touch.

"In front of you, Dustil," Carth told him, not daring to blink. His son swung hard, connecting with Sila's blade and forcing the Sith Lord to step back quickly.

The movement made the Sith's hood fall from his head. His face was thin, elongated, dark red skin stretched over impossible grooves and angles. Two small, beady black eyes turned their gaze on Carth, narrowing and widening again as he spoke.

"I agree, Admiral. It is a curious thing how useful the average sentient can be. That is why we work to save all individuals, regardless of ability." What had to have been a mouth smiled thinly at Carth. "The Jedi respect all life, in any form."

Carth's other blaster, out of reach on the other side of the room, suddenly began firing at them. Carth dove behind the pillar they had set the charge against. Dustil quickly moved towards the malfunctioning weapon, deflecting bolts with his saber and dodging any that he couldn't.

While the Sith Lord could toy with them by taking his time and moving deliberately, he also knew how to move fast. He turned sharply towards Katrina, the hum of his blade cutting through the air almost faster than Carth could open his mouth.

"Right!"

Katrina spun around just as Carth noticed that Sila had moved behind her. The Sith Lord's robes curled around him almost gracefully.

"No, left! _Left_!"

Katrina only managed to get half-way back before Sila's blade hissed against her clothing. Her reflex was lighting-fast; she flung her arm back behind her so her blade met Sila's, but that didn't keep the Sith Lord from sliding it along the length of her ribs.

"Learn your damn directions!" she snapped, switching her lightsaber between hands, her right arm stiff as she clenched it to her side.

Carth tried to take another shot at Sila, but both the Sith Lord and his former Sith Lord wife were moving so quickly that he was afraid of hitting her.

The clashing of Dustil's lightsaber behind him rung in his ears. He resisted the urge to turn around and make sure his son was all right, knowing that he had to watch Sila—

"Carth?" Katrina yelled, spinning around frantically.

Sila had disappeared. Carth scanned the room—

Something heavy stumbled up against him, and he rolled out of the way. Sila had been right over his head. Now he slammed his blade mercilessly into Dustil, who had stopped the Sith Lord from lopping off Carth's head.

Sila raised his arm and ripped Dustil's lightsaber from his hands. The weapon went flying across the room, and the young Jedi Knight raced to chase after it.

"You believe killing me will erase the past, Revan?" the Sith Lord said calmly to Katrina, turning around to face her. His long black robes trailed across the floor as he held both blades in either hand, perfectly straight and parallel to the floor.

"You want to become a Jedi again. I want you to become a _true _Jedi. We both believe that ours is the true path of the Jedi, the true side of the Force. The only difference is in your green blade and my red. Superficial details, nothing more."

"Right and wrong is no superficial detail, Sila," Katrina hissed, slamming her blade up against him. Sila responded with both of his lightsabers pressed up against hers in an X, backing her up towards the wall.

"And right is the lies of your order? According to them, you're just as bad as me for your Carth, your Celyn—"

"Don't you dare—"

"Do I defile them, Revan? Your secrets? The passions your order believes are wrong? You believe they are right. That creates opposing ideologies, doesn't it? By your limited definitions, that makes you Sith."

"Not anymore," Katrina snapped. "You're hurting people. Showing them nothing but pain, misery, darkness, death—"

"So death is wrong. And yet you're still going to kill me, aren't you, Revan?"

Katrina lunged forward and stopped a few inches from Sila's face, as though she had slammed into an invisible wall. Her mouth gaped open and she began to gurgle.

Carth raised his blaster, firing frantically at Sila. His shots were effortlessly deflected. They bounced off the Sith Lord's lightsaber like red streamers into the black floor.

Katrina was hanging off the ground now. Her legs dangled beneath her and her lightsaber began to slip from her hand. She hacked weakly, her face beginning to turn purple—

Sila suddenly stumbled forward, letting out a dry grunt and tripping over his two uneven steps. A sharp crack echoed through the room as Katrina was flung against the rock wall and hit the floor.

It was Dustil, hurtling into the Sith Lord. Sila now turned on him, slamming both double lightsabers up against his son's. It looked like they were trying to crush a glowing red star between them.

Carth quickly raced around them, carefully dodging careless swings of their blades.

Blood flowed bright red from the gash on Katrina's head. She was unconscious and her blade lay uselessly at her side.

From behind him he heard Dustil scream. Carth's head whipped around.

Sila had managed to make a particularly devastating blow against Dustil's right arm. His son backed up, clutching the smoking and charred flesh to his chest, his face contorted.

"Dustil!" he yelled in panic, pushing himself up from Katrina's side.

"Father, _stay there_!" Dustil bellowed, bearing down hard against the Sith Lord. The young Jedi's arms were bent and his face contorted as he tried to hold off Sila.

_Have to help Dustil, have to save him, have to be there for him—_

Carth looked around frantically for some way to make himself useful, for some way he could help Dustil. His blasters were completely ineffective—

Katrina's lightsaber bumped up against his knee. Carth snatched it up and fumbled, trying to turn it on.

"You're going to kill yourself! Stay there!" Dustil snapped, noticing what Carth was trying to do.

Carth ignored him and stood, holding the green blade out in front of him. He wasn't sure if he was more terrified of not being able to help Dustil or the prospect of using the weapon to try. It was so light, like he was holding a fork or a butter knife rather than a deadly weapon. He gripped it so tightly he thought it might break into a million tiny metal splinters in his hands.

He took a swing at Sila. Too hard. The momentum of his arms threw his entire body forward, which had been tense and braced for the weight of a heavier vibroblade. He stumbled off to the side, barely missing his own foot with the lightsaber.

"Don't swing hard! Smooth motions. Pretend it's a flag or a sheet," Dustil instructed, the sweat pouring down his son's face as he blocked another attack from Sila, his injured arm held tightly to his side.

_A flag or a sheet would catch in the wind and at least give me something to fight,_ Carth thought grimly, shaking his head and hefting the blade between his hands. The green beam of light almost seemed to dim, as if the weapon somehow knew it wasn't in the hands of its owner.

He snuck a quick glance over his shoulder at Katrina. She was still slumped against the smooth black rock, a long trail of blood flowing down the side of her face from where she had cracked her head against the wall. If he had the Force, he'd probably be able to tell if she was all right. Maybe heal her. Maybe not feel so fracking _useless—_

Carth jabbed the weapon like a spear towards the Sith Lord's knees. Sila whirled on him, and Carth instinctively raised the blade up to counter.

Sila smashed so hard against him that Katrina's lightsaber came flying back into Carth's own face. He turned his head to the side and tried to push back, but Sila knew how to use the weapons much better than he did. The side of the green blade swiped his temple and the edge of his cheek just before his ear. He smelled the burning hair of his beard and felt the skin crinkle under the heat.

"It's an extension of your arm, not a damn fore-staff!" Dustil snapped, distracting Sila from his momentary stalk towards Carth. "Pressure with your wrists, not your arms!"

_Wrists, not arms. Smooth motions. Extension of my arm, _Carth recited to himself.

Dustil let out a loud grunt as he lifted his arm to block one of Sila's lightsabers. He looked exhausted. The arm holding his lightsaber was trembling, but the Sith Lord's blade slowly moved closer and closer back towards his own face. For a moment, it looked like Dustil had a chance of ending this.

Then Sila's other lightsaber, which had been hovering oddly idle at his side, struck with the sudden bite of a snake at Dustil's legs. His son jumped back, losing the leverage he had against the Sith Lord's blade. Sila twirled the hilts of each blade over his fingers until they were loosely grasped by the last two. Lightning lanced from the Sith Lord's remaining digits, snaking along the obsidian floor and then leaping straight into Dustil's chest.

His son fell back onto the floor, screaming through his clenched jaw and gritted teeth.

"No!" He knew now what it felt like—how you wanted to tear all your skin off but you couldn't stop your fingers from trembling or your jaw from chattering or every muscle in your body from spasming long enough to do it.

Carth watched the last tendril of lightning finally end on the side of his son's neck, snapping his head to the side, the last movement he made before he fell silent and still.

Two limp, motionless bodies now. His wife and his son. And Carth the only one left, the only one still alive. He had failed them. Again.

Sila was already staring at him as if even that—_even killing my son—_hadn't required his full attention or power.

"There is no death, Admiral." The light from his sabers reflected off the pillar behind him, casting a red spotlight around the Sith Lord's feet. "There is only the Force. What freedom in that realization, what clarity…" He tilted his head at Carth. "But you don't know it yet. A pity."

Every muscle in Carth's body—most notably his heart—was screaming at him to attack the Sith Lord. And though he tried to reason that Sila was using the Force to restrain or control him, the hesitance was all his. Even if he couldn't understand it—

Sila laughed, a raspy choking sound that echoed throughout the chamber. "Never fear, Admiral. There is no ignorance. There is only knowledge. And I can help you attain it."

Then the pillar behind him exploded in a giant fireworks display of broken obsidian and soot. Something slammed into Carth, knocking him backwards and off his feet. There was a loud rumble, and then everything went dark.

* * *

Even though Sarii would have liked to see Bao-Dur again, the Force apparently wasn't ready for them.

When Mira pressed the detonator, at first nothing happened. She pressed it again.

"Wouldn't that be just our luck," the bounty hunter muttered.

They heard the results of the explosions before the explosions themselves. Human guards yelling, screaming, dying. Then the ground beneath their fleet began to rumble. Debris and ash fell in spurts from the ceiling. Large cracks ripped through the rocks around them, and Sarii and Mira fell to the floor. Sarii threw her hands around her neck, pulling her legs into her chest and waiting for it to be over.

When the dust settled, Sarii dared to look up, brushing her hair out of her face. The complex walls were no longer smooth or unblemished. Now huge chunks of rock were missing, either half sunk into the cracked floor beneath them or in pieces across the hall. New doorways that hadn't been there before had suddenly appeared, and when she turned to look around her, the impassable wall that had trapped them here had not exploded, but vanished altogether.

Mira lay sprawled face up near the wall. Sarii crawled over to her. "Mira? Are you all right?"

The bounty hunter groaned, opening one eye and then the other. "I feel like I had a wrestling match with a Gamorrean. And I lost. Badly."

"You feel all right," Sarii told her, grasping onto the Force shakily at first and then firmly to try and sense any injuries. "I think you've got a broken rib or two."

Mira winced. "Try twenty-six."

"You don't have that many…"

There was another form sprawled on the floor ahead, past where the wall blocking their path used to be. The rumpled robes spread around the body were not Sith. Not to mention the blond hair.

Sarii pushed herself up, hurrying over to where Mical was lying unconscious a few meters away. He was a little bruised from the blast, but otherwise he looked fine.

"Mical?" she tried, shaking him a little. _Mical?_

Someone made a noise behind her, barely audible. Sarii twisted around, trying to peer through the thick cloud of dust. All she could make out was a pile of probably rocks near the back of this new chamber.

She turned and started crawling towards the noise instead. Her hand grasped fingers that were calloused and gloved. She pawed up the sides of a familiar leather vest, which was now covered in dust. The movements of her hand must have sent some of that dust flying into his face, and he coughed, clearing the air so Sarii could see.

It was Atton Rand.

His breathing was erratic and broken. A veil of blood, sweat, and dirt caked the visible side of his face.

Sarii struggled to turn him over, moved her hands towards his forehead to try and heal him.

She couldn't stop the ragged gasp that came up her throat as she saw that the other side of his face had been flayed to the bone, his brown eye dull and probably no longer functioning.

She tried anyway. The Force rattled through her fingertips, barely touched the pilot's skin, and shot back into her like a backfiring hyperdrive. Sarii tried again with the same result.

"Don't…strain yourself…" Atton rasped. His undamaged eye squinted to see her.

"That bad, huh?" He grinned weakly with a set of chapped and torn lips. "Always was ugly…guess the outside matches now-"

"Just hold on, Atton," she stammered, her hands beginning to shake nervously where they lingered over his body. "You've lost a lot of blood…"

Every time she thought she found a wound she could heal, another caught her eye, verdant red or darkening purple.

"Bout time I had some of my own on my hands…" Atton stiffened into a ball for a moment, clenching his fist and wincing. "The kid…he all right?"

Sarii's head shot up and she stared at him. "The kid…you found Mical."

The pilot's neck stiffened like he was trying to nod, but settled for blinking instead. "He shocked the comm out of Mira's hand. He fell."

"But don't worry," he added. "He's okay now…passed out when he saw what he did…thought he could convert better than I could…score one for me, huh?"

Sarii looked back over her shoulder at where Mical lay. Even unconscious, there was no indication through the Force that he was possessed by the dark side, no sign that he had fallen—

Except for Atton, lying in her arms, with wounds that no blast from an explosive charge could have made.

"But why didn't you just say you saw him?" she continued without waiting for a reply. "Why did you go after him yourself…"

"_But what about Atton?" Sarii demanded. "Does he love me?" _

_She hadn't meant to ask the second question, but still it was softer, quieter. Like she was embarrassed by her own interest. Kreia scoffed in her arms._

"_He is a fool. And that should answer your questions. There is no love left in a heart such as that one."_

Atton feebly shrugged. "Can't leave a Jedi…without a Padawan, right?"

* * *

The world was falling apart. Debris and rocks flew everywhere, pinning his arms and legs, blocking out the light, blinding him. Dustil had been here before—only this time, it was eerily silent. On Telos, he could hear people screaming, saw them fall, saw blaster fire from the skies grow larger and larger until it hit, spraying buildings and blood and body parts across his home.

This time, he was trapped with not only the certainty that his mother was dead, but that his father was too. Immediately, the anger came. _What the frack was he thinking, picking up a lightsaber? It was like he was _trying _to get killed. He didn't think about you, did he? Didn't think about how it might make you feel to watch him die, didn't think about the fact that you'd have to live without him, _again—

On Telos, he'd been angry too. But it was a different kind of anger, born out of feeling betrayed and helpless, not sad. Not finally and totally alone.

_Father, Father, I'm trapped in rubble and Mother's dying, where are you, Father?_

Dustil choked on the thick powder covering his face, coating his lungs and nostrils, groaning and doubling over, more rocks falling over his elbows.

_Don't call for Father. What's the use when he's never going to come—_

"Dustil?"

He heard his father's anxious voice, felt him grasping his arms and checking his pulse.

* * *

Sarii finally let her hands drop, moving one to Atton's forehead and the other to support her on his other side as she leaned over him.

There was no healing this. There was no way to fix it.

"Hey…don't look so sad…"

She struggled to think of a way to position her facial features, some way to hold herself, some words to say that wouldn't tell him that he was going to die—

"S'tired of living anyway," Atton's voice was hard, strangled from the pain. "Too many deaths."

"_He has nothing to offer one such as you," the old woman continued, voice bitter and disgusted, even now when she was about to die and Atton was nowhere near them. "Even a fool such as Atton is not so ignorant of that fact."_

Sarii shivered, letting out an exhale that made a barely visible cloud in the quickly cooling air.

"S'okay...I'll haunt you." He smirked weakly, barely touching her hair where it hung over his face and stuck to his drying blood. Sarii wanted to try and pull it out but was afraid of causing him more pain.

"Didn't mean for you to see this," Atton breathed, his hand touching hers where it was attached to her weary and shaking forearm. "Plan was for you to be gone…supposed to save you…"

"I can still help you," she lied desperately. "I won't leave-"

"You're…dreaming, Sarii," he said, laughing softly. "Thought you _were_ a dream on Peragus…nothing else to call a half-naked woman springing me out of jail…"

* * *

It took Carth a moment to realize that everything had gone dark not because he had died, but because there was something lying on top of him, covering his eyes. He grasped the heavy form with his hands, shoving it off of him with a grunt. Filmy light came back, along with a cloud of dust that made his eyes burn. He coughed, waving at the air and rubbing his face.

The body now lying slumped across his legs was Sila. Yellow blood was splattered across his back and on Carth's clothing. A large part of his skull was missing like it had been bashed away. The Sith Lord was dead.

He kicked savagely at the body, shoving it away from him and pushing himself up from the floor. It was harder to see in the new, cloudy atmosphere of the room, but he managed to make his way over to where Dustil had been lying.

"Dustil?" He was saying his son's name before he even reached his side, before he even got the chance to press his fingers to his neck and thank whatever gods existed in this galaxy that there was still a steady pulse. "Son, are you all right?"

The young Jedi's face twisted as if in pain or confusion or both. His eyes opened, and he stared blearily at Carth before letting his head rest back onto the rock underneath him.

"I think I've got a concussion," Dustil slurred like he'd had one too many drinks.

"I think you've got a guardian angel," Carth replied, eying the giant guillotine-shaped piece of black rock that had missed his son's head by a centimeter or so.

Dustil snorted. "What do I need one of those for when I've got my father, Admiral Onasi, following me around?"

* * *

Sarii concentrated on trying to put Atton's breathing into some sort of rhythm, on counting the beats of her own heart-

"...love you, Sarii."

Both his breathing and her heart were now far beyond any discernable pattern.

"Atton—"

"But you're…afraid of me…" He tried to turn away from her but Sarii grasped his hand, feeling the rough leather of his glove, the callouses covering his hands and the slippery blood in his knuckles.

"_But he would die for you, yes."_

_The last words of a dying Sith Lord probably had better applications. But Sarii didn't care. "Why would he do that?"_

"_I do not believe he would die lightly for one he did not care about."_

"Never…never would have hurt you…" he rasped. "Never."

Atton's hand fell lazily from where it had been reaching for her face. It landed with a smack on his jacket, sending up a cloud of dust and making him grunt. Sarii reached to brush his hair off his wet, sticky forehead.

"Don't believe me…can't blame you, I guess—"

His eyes watched her every move, right up until she swallowed hard and leaned in to kiss him.

* * *

Carth left Dustil to dust himself off and assess his own more minor wounds, and searched frantically for the other limp body lying somewhere in the rocks.

He finally spotted her. She had practically blended into their surroundings, with her black robes and dark hair. It had broken free of her usual braid and was flung over her face.

He leapt over the largest rocks in his way, moving towards Katrina. She was eerily still, and he knelt at her side, trying to see her face.

She groaned softly, and he suspected he was pulling her dark tresses through wounds.

"Katrina." He ignored her request to call her Revan, forgot all the times they had discussed and all the fights over it; forgot "Happy R" and everything else. "Katrina, answer me."

The hand that still lay flat on the ground grasped at the fabric of his pants.

He could hear a slight scratching sound coming front her chapped lips, like she was trying but had no air left.

"Is he dead?" the Jedi finally managed to wheeze.

"He's dead, gorgeous," he said softly, touching her bruised cheeks. Her hand grasped his weakly.

"Good," Katrina breathed. "Good…I didn't think I'd be here to feel it."

"Feel what?"

The Jedi gave him one of her wry smiles. "Feel better."

Even through the dust and the blood and the fact that they were lightyears and lightyears away from home, there was a familiar gleam in her eyes. It took him a moment to place it—he hadn't seen it since Taris.

"Can you stand?" Carth asked.

"I don't think so." He was relieved when a little more tone came back into her voice, even as he glanced down and noticed her leg was twisted at an angle no human could bend it.

He hooked one arm underneath her shoulders and pulled her up, reaching into the pocket of his jacket for the forgotten commlink and switching the channel.

"T3, you there?"

The rapid, probably relieved beeping T3 replied with almost hurt his ears.

"Fly the _Hawk _as close to the complex as you can get," he told the droid. "We're getting the hell out of here." He flicked the switch to the closed comm-to-comm frequency. "Mira, Sarii, if you can hear me, run for it. The _Hawk_'ll be waiting outside. Carth out."

Dustil jogged over, the gash in his forehead running like a line of paint down the side of his face.

"You sure you're all right, son?"

Dustil nodded, shouldering Katrina's other side. "Fine, Dad."

The shift was casual, almost imperceptible in terms of tone; Dustil said 'Dad' in the same way he'd always said 'Father.' But Carth had always been his father. 'Dad' was something he'd thought he lost on Telos, along with his son.

Despite everything, he allowed the stupid grin on his face to linger for a moment before starting for the exit. "Come on. Let's go."

* * *

Sarii wondered what it might have been like to fall in love with Atton Rand, if she would have always felt ticklish while kissing him.

He broke off of her lips into a dry hack and tried to put a hand up to shield her from it, spraying blood down his chin and in little speckles against Sarii's robes.

"Always tried to make it a joke," he wheezed. "Wasn't funny…not when it's true."

She let her palm rest on his throat, trying to at least ease the pain there. "You were never very good with jokes."

The pilot scoffed. "Always had a…tough crowd…between the old hag and the kid—"

"You're not a fool, Atton," Sarii told him quietly. "And you're not a murderer. Not anymore."

"Not really anything anymore…can't do much when you're one with the Force." He laughed. "Just my luck…Spent a lifetime killing Jedi…now I get to spend the afterlife surrounded by 'em..."

His body stiffened in her arms, and he gasped for breath, panting a little until his muscles finally relaxed again. "Hurts…hurts when I laugh." He laughed again anyway.

All she could do was let her fingers take over; they traced the line of his exposed collarbone, barely brushed his chest hair. They shook from everything she wasn't allowing herself to say, and everything else she'd never have a chance to.

"Joke's on me," Atton whispered. His hand caressed her cheek with a last surge of strength. "You saved me."

The Force had never shown her anything when faced with his former Sith assassin training. It fell flat against his thoughts, his feelings.

But easily, effortlessly, as gently as he grew heavy in her lap and slumped against her leg, Sarii felt Atton Rand die.


	25. Chapter 24

Out of six sents that had gone into the Verte complex, five had come back out.

Still, they hadn't had good odds going in. Strictly speaking in terms of numbers, five out of six wasn't bad, and Katrina was willing to take it and be damn grateful it hadn't been worse.

They were all bruised, battered, and bloody. Of the five that had survived, two had broken something, one had a concussion, and one was sick with guilt. It might have been a callous and selfish thought, but she was glad that for once it wasn't her. Mical Jorde—the Exile's Padawan, former Republic intelligence officer, and the one primarily responsible for the pilot's death—had been in a self-imposed exile to the crew quarters since he'd woken up there hours after they'd fled the planet. Katrina hadn't been there to hear the noiseless screaming or to watch his hands shake when they saw the blood on his master's robes, but the echo through the Force (not to mention through the _Hawk_'s battered hull) was close enough. He hadn't massacred a fleet of starships, destroyed planets, razed entire communities or begun a Sith conversion program, but what he felt was no less raw or painfully familiar.

Dustil was with him now, the only person onboard who had been dark enough to understand but light enough to put him and Mical on even ground. Conversion was a funny process—like everything else, balance played a role in its success or failure.

The card Carth had played was a +5. It was a long trip back to the Outer Rim, and there weren't many other ways to pass the time. Mira was cleaning her wrist launcher. The Exile was practicing with a remote. Katrina smiled, tossing down a card. Carth said nothing, picking up a card from the deck and yawning dramatically. He laid it down and rested his chin in his fingers, glancing up at her.

She studied the cards for a moment.

"You're cheating," she announced, meeting his gaze.

"You're using the Force," he countered, raising an eyebrow. He reached forward to flip over another card.

Her hand was around his wrist before both cards—the one he had picked up and the one he was hiding rather obviously in the sleeve of his orange jacket—fell onto the storage container.

They both broke into laughter. Carth grasped the hand that was around his wrist and pulled Katrina over the storage container for a kiss.

The hum of the Exile's lightsaber, steady and rhythmic even as she deflected bolts from the remote, suddenly died. The remote fell unceremoniously to the floor of the _Hawk_, rolling a little across the steel paneling. General Zhen walked past them towards the other set of crew quarters so fast that she created a slight breeze.

Carth watched her until she'd disappeared and then glanced sideways at Katrina. "What'd we do?" he murmured.

"Atton played Pazaak," Mira offered curtly, flicking a pebble of black rock out of one of the panels in her wrist launcher.

Admittedly, it was easy to feel relieved and grateful when the one person who hadn't come out alive wasn't Carth or Dustil.

* * *

_This could not be happening._

_Maybe it wasn't. Sarii was, after all, sitting in the stronghold of the true Sith, known for their methods of twisting reality, altering perceptions, and muddling the truth._

_Though he had promised to haunt her, Atton Rand was nowhere to be found in the Force. She had felt him join it, but immediately lost him in the sea of memories, nightmares, ghosts and souls that made up all life. Instead, there was Kreia, smug but blessedly silent, and Kavar, grim but never shy about telling her what to do._

Run, Sarii. _His voice was firm with more than a little compulsion behind it. _There is nothing left for you here.

"_There's not much left for me out there either, is there, Master?" she replied out loud, brushing her fingers through Atton's hair._

Your Padawan needs you. Don't abandon him again in exchange for the easiest, quickest method of ending your pain.

_Sarii saw nothing easy or quick about whatever these Sith might have in store for a Jedi who had stormed their castle and left a mess in her wake, but the fast approaching footsteps she could hear heading her way didn't leave a lot of time to debate semantics. She forced herself to gently slide Atton's body off her lap, rising from the floor and moving back towards Mical._

_Mira had managed to follow her despite her broken ribs, and was now crouched awkwardly over the Padawan like she was trying to figure out the least painful way of carrying him. Her gaze flickered up at Sarii for the briefest of moments, and then went back to Mical._

"_He's out cold," the bounty hunter informed her. "I think I could manage one leg or something if you can get his arms—"_

_The footsteps were growing louder now, but they were arrhythmic, not the rapid tap of guards or Sith running to attack. Sarii turned to look and saw the Admiral and his son on either side of Revan, who was limping along as fast as she could to keep up._

_All of them had survived the blast or whatever else had injured them. All of them, except Atton. All of them, including Lord Revan._

This can't be happening—

"_Mira, Sarii—" the Admiral lowered the one arm he was using to point a blaster, and instead began gesturing behind them with it. "Get outside. The _Hawk's _waiting."_

_Dustil Onasi ducked out from under Revan's shoulder and moved to pull Mical up, grunting with the effort of slinging the Padawan over his back. "Go." He jutted his chin back behind them again._

_Not one of them turned to look in the direction where Atton lay. Not one of them asked where he was. Even Mira was already halfway down the hallway with the others in tow, a little bent over with one arm pressed up against her ribs and the other raised in case she needed to fire her wrist launcher._

_Atton's face was obscured by the angle of his dead body over the rubble. One hand rested on his chest and the other by his side, mirroring his one bent leg and the other straight. Try as Sarii might to replace the image with something else, it was the last way she saw him, and the last way she would remember him. Dead. Alone. Forgotten. But loved._

_The others moved like they were being chased, even though there was an eerie silence throughout the complex, broken occasionally by a droid going about its business. When they finally reached the outside through the entrance by the landing pad, their pace only quickened. The _Hawk _sat half on the pad and half off, its landing posts sparking like the uneven distribution of weight could cause them to snap at any time. Air shot out from the exhaust panels like the ship was about to take off._

"_Lift off as soon as we're onboard, T3!" the Admiral shouted into his comlink. Revan said something to him but it was too quiet to hear over the _Hawk_. True to form, Sarii could feel pressure on her legs and feet as she made her way up the gangplank behind the others, making her stumble as the ship began to hover and retract its landing posts._

_Dustil Onasi heaved Mical onto the medbay bed, breathing heavily. He didn't look injured, but the way he closed his eyes and lay the upper half of his body over a control console as if the act had tired him seemed to say otherwise. Mira carefully maneuvered to the other side of the bed, leaning up against the wall._

_The Admiral and Revan made their way to the cockpit, where T3 was plugged into the controls and HK stood near the navigation readouts._

"_Greeting: I am pleased you survived, Master," the assault droid told Revan, ignoring Sarii as though she wasn't there. "It would have been unfortunate to have been left in the hands of your former General, who does not emulate your handling of delicate situations."_

"_Go handle yourself into the cargo bay, HK," the Sith Lord muttered, wincing as she hopped over to the gun turret access by herself and began pulling herself up the ladder._

"_And take T3 with you," the Admiral added, dropping smoothly into the pilot's chair and taking the controls. The speed at which the _Hawk _had been lifting off suddenly increased, almost pushing Sarii into the comm room. She carefully navigated her way into the cockpit, sitting in the co-pilot's chair._

_Through the window, she watched as a few gleaming red blasts from the _Hawk_'s turret went spiraling towards Revan's ship still sitting on the landing pad. Pieces of the ship's hull exploded outwards upon contact until the entire thing was engulfed in flames._

"_Good riddance," the Sith Lord muttered over the shipboard comm._

"_Better get the _Chaser_ too," Admiral Onasi called out, a twinge of regret in his voice even now. Revan replied by firing the gun turret again. As the _Hawk _flew over the rock formations towards the sky, a large cloud of red and grey spread gracefully from the valley they had originally landed in._

"_She was a good ship," Onasi murmured, almost to himself. The way he did a double take when he glanced sideways at Sarii made her feel like he hadn't expected her to be there, like he was used to someone else. _

_It was almost as strange as having him in that chair instead of Atton. And almost as unfair._

In the now, Sarii was having just as hard of a time understanding. The Force was about balance. The destinies, fates, futures, and realities of all the sentients it bound together were governed by this one law of metaphysics: balance, in all things. And wasn't balance related to justice? Fairness? Equality?

In what fracking galaxy was it fair and balanced that Atton Rand had to die a slow, painful death in sacrifice for someone he loved while the Sith Lord Revan got to limp away with a broken leg to play Pazaak and flirt with her war hero husband? _Probably the same one that exiles a Jedi for defending the Republic like she swore an oath to do—_

Someone cleared their throat, and Sarii looked up from where she sat on one of the cots. Revan stood in the doorway, one leg pinned in a quick-seal splint.

She turned her back on the former Sith Lord. She could hear her uneven steps as she moved to sit on the cot across from Sarii. For a moment, they both hid in the awkward, paralyzing silence.

"I spent a lot of time in this room," Revan murmured. "During the Star Forge…me, Bastila, Mission…Juhani—"

"Am I supposed to recognize those names?" Sarii echoed in a hollow voice.

"I'm sorry I can't remember you. It'll probably come back to me one of these years—"

"Don't apologize to me." The words came out sharp and clear, cutting through the air and whatever Revan had been going to say. "Apologize to the Jedi Order you betrayed. Apologize to the Republic soldiers you killed. Apologize to Katarr and Telos and Dantooine, and every other destroyed planet you're ultimately responsible for. Apologize to Atton. Apologize to the galaxy." It almost physically hurt to lift her head and stare the Sith Lord down. "Unlike them, I survived following you."

Revan looked stricken for a second, like she was a mouthy kid who hadn't been expecting a well-deserved smack across the face.

"I haven't heard that in a long time." The former Sith Lord smiled bitterly. "I suppose I had it coming."

Sarii looked away again. For a moment, the silence was as comforting as the dim, nondescript wall she stared at.

"I'm not going to apologize for surviving being me, even if so many others didn't," Revan said in a low, quiet voice. "I didn't choose to be dragged half-dead off my flagship, healed and then mind-wiped into a nonexistent person. The Jedi Order and the Republic could have let me die, but they needed me. So talk to them if you're unhappy about me being here instead of your pilot."

The former Sith Lord's fingers tapped against the side of the cot, and she regarded one of the dotted panels in the floor for a moment.

"Did Carth tell you why I came out here?" she asked, looking up at Sarii. "Why I didn't just stay hidden? I didn't have to rejoin the Jedi, or come out here by myself to learn more about some ancient Sith I discovered years ago."

_You had to because you're you. Because you were always stronger and braver and better than the rest of us, whether you were on our side or not. _

When Sarii didn't reply, Revan exhaled impatiently.

"I'm trying," she continued. "It'll never be good enough—no matter what good I do, it'll never equal the bad I did, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't try."

Her tone instantly shifted along with her arms, which she lifted and folded over her chest. "But you seem to think there's something more that I should be doing. Something I owe you more than I owe the rest of the galaxy. So what is it? What do you want?"

_I want my life back_. But that was impossible.

"When I gave the order, at Malachor V…" She closed her eyes, shaking her head. "When _you_ gave the order, I mean…"

Revan was staring blankly at her.

"Malachor V," Sarii tried again. "It was a cultural and religious icon of the Mandalorians—"

"I know what it is," the former Sith Lord interrupted.

"Well, you ordered it destroyed," Sarii snapped back. "You thought it would break their morale, and it did. It also took out half the Republic fleet fighting within the blast radius. Are you trying to tell me you don't remember that either?"

Revan cocked an eyebrow, giving her an icy glare. "Doesn't ring a bell, but thanks for the update. What does this have to do with you?"

Sarii's arms and legs were suddenly too jittery to allow her to keep sitting. "I was your _General_, Lord Revan. You were the greatest Jedi in the Order. You gave the orders, and we—_I _stupidly left judging their ethicality and appropriateness to you. I trusted you…and you let me destroy a planet and kill countless Republic soldiers. I disobeyed the edict of the Order to _protect _the Republic, and instead…"

Her face felt hot, little pinpricks under her skin like she could feel every freckle coloring her cheeks and nose. "Every time someone calls me Exile, it reminds me how much I wish I could go back and not repeat that order. I was ready to accept the Council's anger. I knew joining the Mandalorian war effort wasn't going to come without a price, I just—"

"You just didn't think it would be that high, is that it?" Revan interrupted again.

"No," Sarii answered weakly. "I had no idea what it would be. But you did, and I…I followed you. I trusted you. Just tell me you would take it back too, if you could."

The former Sith Lord blinked once at her. "No."

There was no hesitation in the reply. Not a moment's thought. No, she would gladly defy the Order and lead scores of Jedi and Republic soldiers to Mandalorian victory and Sith death. No, she would destroy Malachor V again, and do it with a smile on her face.

No, she wouldn't take it back, not for anyone—especially not for Sarii.

"Because none of this would have happened if I hadn't fallen, died, been brought back, forgotten everything, and slowly began to remember it again," the former Sith Lord continued. "I wouldn't have met Carth—"

"You'd destroy the galaxy for one man?"

Revan smiled to herself for a moment. "For Carth Onasi, I would."

The cold feeling in the pit of her stomach was starting to make it hard to form coherent sentences. "That's…so selfish—"

The former Sith Lord rolled her eyes, scoffing. "And you wouldn't tell the Republic to go frack themselves if it meant you could go back to Verte and save Atton Rand?"

"_Joke's on me," Atton whispered. His hand caressed her cheek with a last surge of strength. "You saved me."_

"I'm sorry he's dead," Revan murmured, quiet. "But he died saving your padawan. He made that choice. We all make choices, Sarii. Sometimes we don't make the right ones."

"But you wouldn't take it back." Her mouth was numbly repeating a concept her mind refused to grasp.

"No. Never. And I don't think your pilot would either."

Sarii shook her head. "You didn't know him. You don't know what he was. Before I met him, he was…he was a Sith conversion artist. One of yours. He helped turn and torture Jedi, all under your command. He was ashamed of what he did—"

"Not if it led to him making the right choice," Revan said sharply, right over her, like her words were less important. "Not if he learned something from it." She stood, slightly taller than Sarii, though even if she hadn't been Sarii would have felt smaller anyway.

"I did terrible things," the Sith Lord told her. "Even on Verte, in trying to make up for them…I did terrible things. Maybe what I've learned will save the Republic some day. Or maybe I should have been the one to die back there. Either way, I made the choice, and I don't regret it. You made your own choices too. Live with them. Or keep blaming me for them. But I'm not going to lose any sleep over anyone's decisions but mine."

By the time Sarii looked up, all she saw was the back of Revan's head, the ponytail of dark brown hair swinging a little as she walked away.

_Redemption was not Revan's choice. _Kreia's voice was bitter on the former Sith Lord's behalf. The old woman was reaching, pushing so hard at Force, as if she wanted to spring to ghostly life and talk to her former student once more. _And I have never believed those of the Council who attempt to console themselves otherwise for the crime they committed. Even were she to fall to the dark side once more, she would never again be who she was. The Council's mind tricks have seen to that. _Her voice grew soft. _She remembers nothing of me._

The old woman's presence in the Force suddenly grew stronger, as if Kreia was shaking her head and coming back to the present. _But you were there at Malachor, Exile. Revan's choices were always her own. It was not teaching, or circumstance, or example. It was her. To claim to know anything of Revan's choices or what lies in her heart is conceit, and yet…_

And yet, in the end, they were hers. Not forced by the Mandalorians or the Jedi or the Sith or the dark side, but made with the belief that what she was doing was right. Even if that belief was based on lies, misperceptions, or events already in motion that no one could have predicted, it didn't transfer ownership of the decision. It was hers. Sarii's.

_Do you understand now, Sarii, the difference between an open wound and a healing one? _Kavar had company now; Kai-Ell, Vrook, Vash, and Atris, all watching as though her reactions still had any kind of effect on the dead. _You have the ability to lead, bond with, and influence others, and yet you blamed others for your actions. Sentients would follow you only to be led to their own destruction for a choice they had no part in making. Your exile was self-imposed; you isolated yourself from your actions. We merely vocalized it, gave it physical form._

_There is no dishonor in a choice made without regret. _Kreia spoke apart from the rest, in Sarii's right ear rather than her left._ Pain, at times. And joy, in its stead. The end perhaps does not always justify the means. But even Atton's unrepentant murderer's heart served a purpose, in the end. His desire to protect you…and the hope that you truly cared for him._

The chuckle in her head was achingly familiar. But it was an echo, far enough away now that Sarii knew it was the last time she would ever hear it. She strained to catch Atton's last words anyway.

_Who's the fool now, you old bag?_


	26. Chapter 25

Carth had never been much for city-planets. Between a childhood on Telos and spending time on planets like Corellia or Taris, he'd become somewhat convinced that eliminating everything green and natural from a planet's surface would eventually spread to the people too.

But he'd never been happier to see the glittering grid of Coruscanti buildings and the packed space lanes heading into and out of the planet's atmosphere. The journey back had been slightly faster; thanks to their plotting the hyperspace routes as they traveled, but coming from the heart of the Unknown Regions to the capital of the Core worlds was no day trip. It also hadn't helped that the _Hawk _was in piss-poor shape, but Carth was going to fix that once they landed.

Katrina sat in the co-pilot's seat next to him, hands tensed on the edge of the dashboard, hovering on the edge of her seat like by leaning forward, she might be able to make out Celyn somewhere a million kilometers below them.

"Republic Control, this is Carth Onasi, requesting permission to land."

There was no trace of static in the familiar voice that replied. "Welcome back, Admiral."

"Good to be back, Forn," Carth answered. "Nice to hear you're out of your office."

Dodonna laughed. "Well, when your message to Republic Command from the Outer Rim reached my desk, I knew I had to see it for myself. A lot of officers have lost some bets."

"Just don't expect me to pay them off," he replied dryly, beginning their descent. "I'm betting you're going to want a meeting with me before we head back to Telos."

"Scheduling's having a fun time trying to get all the brass together in one room at the same time, but I expect it'll happen within the next forty-eight hours. You're cleared for dock seven."

"Understood. Carth out."

The auto shader tinted the cockpit glass to combat the large setting sun to the west. The _Hawk _wove through two flocks of birds and around the Republic flight control tower, easing down into their empty assigned dock.

Carth exhaled, leaning back in his seat and running a hand through his hair. "Welcome home, gorgeous."

Katrina glanced sideways at him. "We're going straight there." It was not a question.

He nodded, trying and failing to resist the urge to smile. "Straight there."

He unbuckled his seatbelt, waiting for her to rise from her chair and start down the hallway before he got up and followed her. Mira, Sarii, Mical and Dustil were already gathering up their things in the common room. Mical looked a little—well, okay, a lot paler and thinner than he had when they started this trip, but he was as quiet and composed as ever, waiting politely for Sarii and Mira to head down the gangplank before him.

"What, no datatape parade?" Mira quipped as she exited the _Hawk_. "I was expecting at least a Gungan marching band."

The dock was huge, but fairly empty. A few technicians and mechanics were working on smaller fighters lined along the wall. There was a large group of people gathered near the dock's exit, and the instant Carth and Katrina stepped off the gangplank, a flurry of snapshot clicks and camera droid flashes went off from one end of the group to the other.

One person managed to duck under the rope keeping the rest of the press out and past the two port authority officers guarding it. The officer closest to her looked from the jostling crowd to the single woman walking a brisk pace towards the _Hawk_. "Miss Vin!" he called half-heartedly. "You're not authorized to—"

As soon as she was within ten meters of him, Tova ran into Dustil's arms. Dustil stumbled backwards under the force of her kiss. His arms wrapped tightly around her until she was up on the tips of her toes.

_My son has the Force. My son is a Jedi Knight. My son is in love with a beautiful girl. My son is getting married. My son is happy._

Wherever she was, he hoped Morgana could see it.

"Wow…can that be your normal hello from now on?" he heard Dustil say.

"Depends," Tova replied. "Are you going to be gone for almost a year again anytime soon?"

"Well hey, if it gets me greetings like that…"

Carth squeezed Katrina's hand and she squeezed back softly. Tova turned towards them.

"Master Jedi," she greeted, nodding respectfully. "Admiral Onasi."

"Hey Tova," Carth replied, leaning forward to give her a hug. "Try and take it easy today, huh?" he murmured in her ear.

The blonde smirked, twirling her microphone around expertly in her hands. "I'll do my best, Admiral, but I can't make any promises." She pressed a button and a camera droid floated over the heads of the other reporters and up in front of their path, moving backwards as they headed towards the exit.

Tova flicked her hair over her shoulders and licked her lips once before nodding to the droid. A small red light blinked three times and then remained lit.

"_This Just In _with _Tova Vin, _reporting live from the Republic Command docks, where Admiral Carth Onasi has just returned from an extended and highly top secret mission into the Unknown Regions."

Behind them, Mira snorted. "You're dating a HoloNet reporter?" she asked Dustil. The way she said 'Holonet reporter' might have been the same way another person would have said 'exotic dancer.'

The bright, alert expression on Tova's face didn't budge. She stuck the microphone in his face, and Carth involuntarily recoiled. "Admiral, do you have any official comment on rumors that your mission was an attempt to gather intelligence on an emerging Sith threat perhaps more powerful and more deadly than Lord Revan and Lord Malak?"

"They're not," Katrina answered before he had a chance. She didn't bat an eyelid, but one side of her mouth lifted.

The two guards tried lamely to contain the rest of the press waiting for them outside. They managed to clear a small tunnel, but two dozen hungry journalists were no match for two overwhelmed recruits.

"You'll have to attend the press conference and read the official statement from the Republic like everyone else, Miss Vin," Carth told her, trying to avoid the rest of the microphones suddenly shoved out in front of him.

"Of course, if you want an exclusive from the most important Jedi on this mission, I'd be happy to give you one," Dustil said, elbowing his way past Carth to get next to Tova and in front of her camera. "My father will downplay the events of the past few months, but I'll let you in on a little secret: I pretty much single-handedly saved the galaxy," he whispered loudly into her microphone.

Tova jerked it sharply out of his hands, the smile on her face never faltering. "We might have room for a segment with you, Master Jedi. Maybe after we interview your utility droid."

Carth lifted his hand to his mouth, trying to make his snort sound like he had been clearing his throat.

-- -- -- -- -- --

"…I still fail to understand, Jedi Revan."

_Of course you do_. It was dangerous, heady stuff being in front of the Jedi Council now. It wasn't bravado and arrogance that made Katrina think she was more powerful and knew better than them—it was the fact that she _was_. She could see what they were thinking as easily as she was reading a datapad. All the councilmembers' fears, doubts, motivations, and secrets were there for her perusal, courtesy of Sila's tutelage. The ability made her uneasy, and Katrina didn't probe any deeper than the surface. But knowing that she could…it just made her impatient to get out of here.

She inhaled sharply. "Master Ahniuk, I am trying to tell you that these Sith are the threat from beyond the Outer Rim that you believe corrupted Lord—me and Malak. Whether they are the true lost Sith species or the descendents of the dark Jedi exiled to the Unknown Regions millennia ago, you need to realize that they are a definite threat, and if you allow them to continue their work on Verte, you'll find them walking the halls of the Temple calling themselves Jedi before you know it."

"We have physical evidence, Master," Dustil reminded them, his tone bordering on exasperation. "T3's got coordinates and journal entries documenting their presence and activity in the Unknown Regions. We have detailed lists of Sith conversion operations on Remli Prime. Padawan Mical Jorde experienced the conversion first-hand, and if you want me to tell you about Chael again—"

"And were he fully recovered from it, we would have summoned him here as well to share his experience," Master Korr interrupted firmly. "We do not doubt the Sith's existence or their intentions, Knight Onasi. What the Council finds difficult to grasp is their _inactivity_. As you have noted in your report, Jedi Revan, these Sith have had numerous occasions upon which to obtain hyperspace routes and coordinates to Republic space, despite your efforts to deter them by destroying your own ship and the _Jedi Chaser_."

_And they probably already have them. _It was terrifying to imagine—Sila and the rest of them at any time could have invaded and crushed the Order and the Republic swiftly. There would have been no warning. There would have been no victory, even with Lord Revan on their side.

"What are they waiting for? An engraved invitation?" Jolee said, gesturing with one hand and then returning it to where his arms were folded against his chest.

"Which is easier, Masters?" It was infuriating how obtuse they were being when it all seemed so fracking obvious. "Mounting a loud, full-scale assault on the entire Republic fleet, or quietly capturing all the Jedi and non-Jedi you can and converting them to your side? Pretty soon, there won't be enough true Jedi left to oppose them when they do decide to pick up and attack. They let us escape because they knew we would come back, and when we do, I think we should be ready."

"And what do you suggest?" Master Ahniuk asked, lifting an eyebrow. "Should we raise an army? The Republic will not support us in this, no matter how strong of an ally Admiral Onasi is. These Sith have attacked no Republic worlds. They pose no immediate threat. Your reports indicate that they cooperate legally and, by all accounts, peacefully on the worlds of the Unknown Regions."

It would be so easy to twist things. Bend the truth a little. Use what they knew or thought they knew against them to make them see her point of view. They were all so vulnerable, so impossibly open-minded. Like they were inviting Katrina into their heads, _begging _her to help them—

"Then what _are_ you going to do?" she snapped, killing the thought before it ended. "I sure as hell hope it's not nothing."

Jolee chuckled. "You know, I wasn't on the Council during the Mandalorian Wars, kid, but I'm getting a distinct feeling of déjà vu. Anyone else?" He glanced around the Council chambers. No one answered, but that didn't stop the old man from snickering to himself anyway.

"I am surprised that your experiences thus far have not yet taught you the value of patience and consideration for the implications of an action, Jedi Revan," Master Korr continued. "The Council has no desire for a repeat of Katarr and the days of Jedi assassins. But we will not send good men and women to their deaths needlessly."

"They wouldn't die needlessly," Katrina interrupted. "They would die for the Order. For the Republic. If they aren't worth dying for, why did I waste my time out in the Unknown Regions all these months? Why are we even bothering to talk about this?"

It was almost visual now, the way a sentient's mind worked. The words iced over the thought processes of each and every councilmember, freezing them midway to their next objection.

"Beats me," Jolee finally said. "I think Revan makes an excellent point."

"If we are to send additional Jedi to investigate these Sith, or at the very least to aid the Republic in shutting down the operations at Remli Prime, they will need to be prepared," Ahniuk said. "Jedi Revan, you and Knight Onasi will train an elite group to combat the mental capabilities of the Sith."

"The knowledge you obtained on Verte is powerful, but dangerous," Master Korr said. "We will need time to select the most stalwart and seasoned Jedi appropriate for such an undertaking. And their training will need to be kept secret and separate from the rest of the Order. The newly refurbished enclave on Telos may be an ideal location."

"When the time comes, you may be asked to lead that group back into battle," Ahniuk added. "But not before. Is this an acceptable compromise?"

_Not really. _But it was probably the best she was going to get from the Jedi Council.

"Fine with me," Katrina replied. "That is, if it's fine with you," she added, glancing sideways at Dustil.

Her former Padawan shrugged in agreement, though the smirk on his face said he was more excited about the opportunity than he was letting on. "I'm getting married in a few months. But I'll keep an eye on her for you until then," he told the Council.

Jolee guffawed into his hand.

-- -- -- -- --

The sun was setting quickly. It was fortunate that natural light had little effect on a Miraluka, because the child wasn't ready yet.

Visas felt a breeze pass under and around her, fluttering her robes and giving her goosebumps. But she did not release her hold on the Force. She owed the child that much.

Ever since she had watched her mother brutally attack her father, albeit to save his life, Celyn Onasi had become a shadow of her formerly mischevious, confrontational self. She spoke little, ate little, played little, and refused to speak of the incident again. Though the Council had grimly thanked her for her efforts to relay information about Revan's activities, it did nothing to assuage Visas's guilt over exposing the child to a living nightmare. Since then, she had visited the girl daily, offering lessons in the Force and soothing meditation. Neither did much to draw the child out of her quickly closing shell.

Even now, Celyn floated only a centimeter or so from the ground, clothes brushing the marble floor. Her hands were folded between her crossed legs, and she was a little hunched inward like the mediation was a warm blanket in a cold, cold place.

Visas exhaled. "Think of something that brings you happiness. A friend, or a favorite memory."

All that came to the girl's mind was an image of her mother. At least this time it was not a replay of her actions in the Unknown Regions. Nevertheless, Celyn took a few deep breaths as if she was preparing to cry.

The child's sudden break of the meditation bond startled Visas enough that she fell onto the smooth marble floor, reaching to rub her tailbone as she watched Celyn spring to her feet.

The little girl's aura was brighter than it had ever been before; a glowing star racing across the courtyard, flying over the steps, breaking through the approaching crowd of apprentices and ignoring the calls of a few of them.

The Miraluka watched through the walls of the Jedi Temple, past the marble pillars, following the glimmer of Celyn Onasi darting around perplexed masters and self-righteous padawans. Force-sensitive reflexes and natural speed overruled the clumsiness of a growing child and made her leap over a utility droid tending flowers and slide down a banister without any break in her movements.

The little girl's happiness was blinding and overwhelming, warming Visas and making her smile in spite of herself.

The reason was obvious. Revan had returned.

-- -- -- -- -- --

For a second, Carth wished he had a blank holocube.

Sleeping on the _Hawk _was a better idea than staying in the Jedi Temple. He couldn't count the number of strange looks Katrina had gotten- the married Jedi with a little girl having a giant reunion in the middle of the Jedi headquarters. The ship was private and got them away from whatever disapproving words the Jedi might have had.

He couldn't understand how anyone could possibly disapprove of what he had in front of him. They both looked so damn cute right now that he felt like he should leave them there all night, with the hopes that they would still look like that when he woke up.

But in the position Katrina was in she would have a horrible ache in her neck by morning, and Celyn would catch a cold under the sterile controlled climate of the cockpit. So Carth leaned over them, trying to figure out how to untangle his daughter from Katrina's arms.

Once she'd come flying at them in the halls of the Jedi Temple, the little girl hadn't stopped talking. She'd peppered him with questions and told him everything that had happened to her, going from one story to the next without any kind of flow or pause.

With Katrina she had finally been quiet. It would have been eerie, the way they had sat here in the cockpit watching the Coruscanti sunset if the hours of silence hadn't been broken occasionally by laughter.

He figured Celyn was just as talkative through the Force, because both wife and daughter had fallen asleep just before the sun finally disappeared under the vast cityscape of the planet.

Celyn gave a soft cry at the momentary shift from being curled up on Katrina to being lifted into Carth's arms. Her brown hair was feathery and wisps of it stuck to his jacket as he carried her back towards the crew quarters. Her mouth hung open and her little body radiated with drowsy heat.

It was almost hard to tuck her into one of the bunks when his little girl's head was resting on his shoulder, when her little hands were lying heavy and limp against his back. Celyn's eyes, the corners greasy with sleep, fluttered open as he pulled back the thin blanket and put her in the bunk.

"Father?" she mumbled. Carth ran the back of his hand across her cheek.

"Go back to sleep, Jawa," he told her quietly. His daughter yawned, half reaching for the finger on her cheek before slumping to the side and falling back asleep.

Carth drew the blanket a little farther up over her shoulders and returned to the cockpit.

No one could blame Katrina for being exhausted. Her hair hung in soft tendrils over her shoulders; for once not confined in its usual braid. Her hands lay crossed over each other in her lap like she was still holding onto Celyn.

He gently kissed her cheek. The Jedi bristled, her head lifting slowly and giving him a barely lucid smile.

"Beautiful women shouldn't sleep in cockpits."

Katrina made some soft noise of agreement, and let him pull her up from the chair. The natural grace of a Jedi must have been in the half of her that was still asleep, because she stumbled and he put his hand on her back to steady her. She padded slowly in the direction he pointed her to; towards the medbay and the bed they'd shared during the Star Forge.

Her only contributions to helping him slip off her outer robes were lifting her arms slightly and making half-hearted efforts to keep her eyes open. Carth eased her back into the bed, pulling off his own shirt and wrapping a possessive arm around her waist.

His hand felt like it conformed to the lines of her stomach. His fingers remembered the exact curve of her from thigh to ribcage, the exact spot that her firm abs softened into the slight pouch of having given birth; the odd scar that ran across her skin.

Carth Onasi finally closed his own eyes, eagerly seeking sleep.

He couldn't wait to wake up and say 'morning, gorgeous'.

-- -- -- -- -- -- --

The Hall of a Thousand Fountains was a place of great spiritual and mental strength within the Jedi Temple. A lot of people pictured the spray of countless assorted waterfalls, a loud rush echoing throughout the Temple halls. In reality, there was a surprising amount of variation between each and every fountain. Some sent out a cool, calm mist, while others sent spurts of water dancing from one drain to the next. Others simply were large, running waterfalls, while some created rain showers or shapes. All of them together created a kind of strange, syncopated song that sounded different depending on where you were in the Temple.

It was a good place to think and meditate. It wasn't a good place to dump your Padawan.

_He was there before she even was, facing one of the larger fountains with his back to her, prompt and timely and responsible, as usual. At least the Sith hadn't taken that away from him._

_He turned when Sarii reached him. "Master Zhen."_

"_You look better, Mical," she told him politely. That was all she had left for him: politeness. Niceties. Things you would say to an acquaintance, someone you didn't intend on seeing again._

_He nodded, clearing his throat. "The meddroids tell me I am not physically damaged, as far as they could tell."_

_Sarii nodded back. "That's good."_

_The drip-drop of a small fountain next to them punctuated the dead space in their conversation._

"_Mira left the Temple this morning," Mical continued. "She claimed she wanted to lose herself in a cantina for a night, but she took many of her belongings with her. Still, I doubt this is the last we will see of her."_

"_Atton was the deserter, not Mira." Speaking his name suddenly made the chasm between them visible, though it had been there all along and would always be there._

"_I—" Her Padawan cleared his throat again, hoarse. "I've wanted to say…I don't know how to tell you how sorry I…"_

_He stopped, turning his head away to watch an engineered waterspout swirling across a flat pool._

"_There are no words, Master Zhen." And the ones he had were too heavy with emotion. "I know how…important he was to you. I admired him too, despite our differences, I never—"_

"_You never meant to kill him. I know, Mical. I'm not angry. I don't hate you." The noise of a thousand fountains left no quiet space for lies. "But you understand why I could never be a good Master to you again."_

_Mical nodded. "The Council has already reassigned me, to Master Iridel. They say he has experience with…my situation."_

_Sarii grasped his shoulders. "You were a good Padawan, Mical. You'll be a wonderful Jedi someday. And it'll be because of what happened on Verte, not in spite of it."_

_The former intelligence officer laughed once. It echoed off the rounded bowl of the rock-filled fountain behind them. "Is that what it takes, I wonder? Is that the price of a good Jedi?"_

"_Because if it is, Atton was right," he continued without waiting for an answer. "Perhaps we really are the scourge of the galaxy."_

"_You don't believe that."_

_The tenseness in his shoulders deflated a little. "No, I do not. But it makes it easier for me to justify my presence among them."_

There probably wasn't anywhere appropriate to dump your Padawan. But at least Sarii had left him somewhere that lent itself to calm, rational thought. Mical didn't have the benefit of a host of Force ghosts and dead masters to give him advice.

The nearest empty room was the east reading room, just off the main Archive entrance. It was nondescript, decorated with a few chairs, potted plants, and end tables. The sound-dampening walls blocked out the noise of the fountains, and that was really the reason she wanted to be in there. She had had enough calm, rational thought for one day—

"Am I in the wrong room?"

Sarii jumped, putting her hand to her throat at the sound of another voice other than her own thoughts.

The man in the corner looked so self-assured that she wondered how she had missed him. He sat in a chair with one leg folded across the other, his elbows resting on the chair's arms and his hands clasped in front of him. He watched her from across the floor with a raised eyebrow.

Sarii lowered her hand, smoothing the front of her robes. "I'm sorry if I interrupted something—"

The man shook his head, smiling.

"There's not much to interrupt at the moment. In fact, you might have just saved me from falling asleep."

Something about his face seemed so familiar, but she couldn't place it. His eyes, not quite green and not quite brown, a color she forgot the name of momentarily— was it hazel? –stared back into hers without any kind of uncertainty or hesitation.

"I almost got lost in here. The Order should really think about hiring some guides or public relations officers to help ignorant folks like me."

Sarii laughed, and the man grinned, pleased with the reaction.

"You're not a Jedi, then," she murmured, although she could feel the Force within him like a small but very scrappy family pet.

"Nope. Just a politician."

"I'm sure whatever you're doing in the Jedi Temple is a very interesting story then," Sarii replied.

The man smirked, running a hand along his dark brown hair, straight and slicked back.

"I was here to see my sister. Elections just finished on my planet and I thought it was about time for our four year reunion."

He pushed himself up from the chair. He was a few centimeters taller than Sarii, dressed in blue civilian clothing.

"Maybe you can help me out, Master Jedi…?"

"Sarii. Sarii Zhen."

"Sarii," the man repeated.

She decided she liked the way he cocked his head to the side thoughtfully, the way his hands fell flat at his sides.

"Maybe you can show me around the place. Then next time I won't end up in some forgotten sitting room."

"I could help you find your sister," she offered.

The man shook his head. She suddenly felt self-conscious; wondering if her ginger-colored hair was mussed, if her eyes were telling the story of the past few years in their lack of color.

"No, I think she's a little distracted at the moment. Some Republic nobody's more important than her brother the Governor. Go figure."

"Besides, sometimes there are more important things than my sister," he added with a knowing wink.

"I might not be the best guide," Sarii murmured. "I was exiled from the Order for a while."

His gaze was impenetrable, no matter how much she politely looked away. To her surprise, she found herself blushing.

"Small galaxy," the man replied. "I'm an exile too."

END


End file.
